Cop Out

What do you get when you take Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Tracy Morgan (30 Rock), a valuable baseball card, a Mexican gangbanger named Poh Boy, a free-running burglar, a teddy bear with a hidden camera, a stolen car, a lot of cursing, and have Kevin Smith direct it all? You get the new buddy-cop comedy “Cop Out”

Willis and Morgan play veteran New York police officers Jimmy Monroe and Paul Hodges, who after nine years together as partners have just been suspended for a month after spectacularly screwing up a case and embarrassing the entire department. This is bad for Monroe, as his daughter (Michelle Trachtenberg: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) is getting married and the bill is going to be $48,000, so he can hardly afford a month without pay.

In order to get the money to pay for the wedding Monroe decides to sell an extremely valuable Andy Pafko baseball card. Unfortunately the sports card shop is robbed during the sale, and the card is stolen by a quirky and somewhat annoying thief, Dave (Seann William Scott: “American Pie”), and the quest to retrieve the card quickly gets the two detectives caught in the middle of the plans of an up and coming Mexican drug dealer.

I will admit that from the trailers and the title I expected that this to be something like one of the fictional movies that Tracy Jordan would have starred in on “30 Rock”, but I am happy to say that I was totally wrong. “Cop Out” may not be original, it may not be action pakced, and it certainly isn't family friendly, but it is a lot of fun to watch.

To say the humour in this movie is childish would be an understatement. Not only are there the requisite poop and dick jokes, but there are actually knock-knock jokes, and a couple of scenes with Scott's character copying everything other characters say in order to piss them off. This is not a slight on the movie though, as you weren't expecting highbrow humour from a film like this anyway, but this is the only movie I can think of where a knock knock joke has actually made me laugh out loud.

It is nice to see Bruce Willis playing the snarky cop again, bringing back shades of the “Die Hard” trilogy (there is no fourth film). There's nothing about this character that we haven't seen him play before, but it's nice to see him playing it again in a movie that doesn't suck.

As for Tracy Morgan, he brings to the screen the same sort of borderline mentally handicapped character he plays on “30 Rock”, so if you like Tracy Jordan, then you should enjoy Paul Hodges. Morgan steals more than a couple scenes based on the fact that his idea of playing good cop/bad cop means doing (frequently random) movie quotes from movies like “Heat”, “Jaws”, and “Star Wars”. Morgan ultimately brings an almost frenetic Robin Williams-esque vibe to the role, and I fully expect to see a number of deleted scenes with him when this comes out on DVD.

“Cop Out” dances along the line between plausible and zany. This is not a “Police Squad” style parody, but it's also not as straight as a “Lethal Weapon” movie. Characters frequently do things that are just beyond the bounds of believability, but never so much as to actually ruin your suspension of disbelief.

If you are looking for a buddy cop film with less violence and more laughs than a “From Paris With Love” then “Cop Out” is the perfect flick for you. It won't make you think, but it will make you laugh. There's no real reason not to just wait and give this a rental, but if you want a good laugh you could do a whole lot worse.

“Cop Out” opens fire on theaters starting February 26th.