Buddy cop movie has a few laughs, but not enough plot
My dad has always got the short end of the stick in a house with
three women. When it comes to TV watching, no one else in the house
wants to watch wrestling, Westerns or football. He rarely gets
control of the HD flat screen in the living room, except when the
three of us are out running errands or before we get home from
work.
So every once in a while, we take pity on him and go see a movie
he really wants to see, even if we know it’s probably going to be
really, really bad.
Buddy cop movie has a few laughs, but not enough plot
My dad has always got the short end of the stick in a house with three women. When it comes to TV watching, no one else in the house wants to watch wrestling, Westerns or football. He rarely gets control of the HD flat screen in the living room, except when the three of us are out running errands or before we get home from work.
So every once in a while, we take pity on him and go see a movie he really wants to see, even if we know it’s probably going to be really, really bad.
This weekend we went to see “Cop Out,” which stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as cops who don’t really know their way around a suspect or a crime scene. The only reason I agreed to see the movie is that Tracy Morgan makes me laugh so hard on “30 Rock,” I figured the movie should have at least a few laughs in it.
The film is directed by Kevin Smith, and written by Robb and Mark Cullen. The plot was pretty weak and a lot of it was written just to get the actors to the next dirty joke or gross-out scene. I laughed a little, but my dad, well, he laughed a lot more.
Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are NYPD cops who have an unconventional way of getting suspects to confess. One of them goes into the interrogation room and pretends to be another criminal, gun waving in the air at the suspect, until the criminal in custody eventually starts calling for the cops to help them out and confesses all they need to know.
The latest criminal admits that his cell phone store is used as a front to sell drugs. He gives up the name of his supplier, and when they next delivery will be. Paul and Jimmy decide to act quickly on an undercover sting, with Paul dressed up as a giant cell phone outside the store. Jimmy is parked down the block away from the storefront. But the store owner acts suspiciously and the drug dealer, Juan, (Cory Fernandez) freaks out, opening fire in the store.
Paul and Jimmy lose him on the streets. When Capt. Romans (Sean Cullen) hears about the escapade, he informs the duo that another set of cops had been working on the cartel already. The two of them have basically ruined months of work on the other investigation. He suspends the partners for a month without pay.
Paul doesn’t really seem all that upset at the prospect of losing a month’s salary. But Jimmy needs money to pay for his daughter’s extravagant wedding. It’s six weeks away and the price tag is $48,000. Ava’s (Michelle Trachtenberg) stepfather has promised to cover the cost of the wedding, but Jimmy is too stubborn to allow it.
Around this point in the movie is where the point starts to get a little too convoluted. Jimmy decides to sell an old baseball card to get the money for the wedding. But as he is in the pawn shop, it gets rob by a criminal who has a unique tattoo on his arm. His card – and his hopes for wedding money – are gone.
Jimmy and Paul decided to use their investigative skills to hunt down the thief, which eventually leads them right back to the drug dealers they were originally hunting for when they were still on duty. To bulk up the weak plot, the writers add in Paul’s suspicions that his wife Debbie (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him; the obnoxious thief Dave (Sean William Scott,) and a drug dealer (Guillermo Diaz) who has his sights on becoming a drug lord.
For anyone looking for a very funny, not so dirty buddy cop movie, they should watch “Hot Fuzz.” The British comedy is somewhat of a spoof of the buddy cop movie. It has Simon Pegg at his best as hot shot cop Nicholas Angel, who is transferred out of his London office to a rural village so he will stop making all the other cops look bad. There PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) as ideas of the two being great partners together. It’s a seriously funny movie with an unexpected twist.
“Cop Out” is one to skip except for Kevin Smith fans. Anyone looking for a Tracy Morgan fix should just watch old episodes of “30 Rock.” Those looking for a Bruce Willis fix should see “Die Hard 1-3.”
Melissa Flores can be reached at mf*****@pi**********.com. Read about her trip to the Cinequest Film Festival on her blog at http://melissa-movielines.blogspot.com.
