Don’t “Cop Out” of Seeing This!
Shutter Island may have been the best movie I have screened so far this year, but Cop Out was by far the most fun I have had at the theater in 2010. It’s laugh out loud hysterical at times and rather cliché at others, but there’s no doubt that the film strictly adheres to the fundamentals of a successful screenplay. Anyone who has studied modern day authors of screenwriting (Blake Snyder, Syd Fields, etc…) would be hard pressed to argue that Cop Out‘s plot points before Acts II and III are not vacuumed sealed airtight. I guess that’s why the screenplay was in the 2008 Black List (a list of the best unproduced screenplays).
The Kevin Smith directed the Cullen Brothers penned comedy, originally known under the working title of A Couple of Dicks. This marks the first film that Kevin Smith directed, but did not write. The film features the comedic tag team of the hilarious over-the-top Tracy Morgan and everyone’s favorite “die-hard” battery Bruce Willis. Add in one heaping serving of the lunatic Seann William Scott (oh how I missed his zaniness from the original American Pie trilogy) and a little uneven Adam Brody seasoning and what you got is one hell of a dialog driven action/comedy mayhem vehicle (say that three times in a row) that never let’s up in the entertainment value and one-liners department. The comedic moments range from outright absurd moments that had me busting at the seams from laughter to milder moments where I thought to myself, “Hey, haven’t I heard that one before?” But truthfully, it’s the practically marriage-like partnership of the two cops (Morgan and Willis) and their love/hate relationship that we really care about here. The screenwriters did their homework and hit it out of the ballpark in the “Best Buddy” category (see Snyder’s Save the Cat).
Cop Out, in a nutshell, is about two veteran NYPD cops (Morgan and Willis) and their pursuit of tracking down a stolen vintage baseball card. I know what you are thinking. A baseball card! Give me a break! But wait! It’s not just any vintage baseball card. It’s Jimmy Monroe’s (Willis) Andy Pafko card. And worst of all, it is stolen by an amateur thief named Dave (Scott). OK. Maybe that’s not the worst part. Maybe the worst part is that the card just happens to be valued around $80,000. That’s a lot of cheese! Also, is it any coincidence that it just happens to cover the $50,000 wedding expenses of Jimmy’s daughter? I think not. So as Paul (Morgan) and Jimmy track down the stolen card they eventually end up confronting an entire mob of gangsters, rescuing a beautiful captive prisoner named Gabriela (Ana de la Reguera), dealing with domestic ordeals (Paul’s cheating wife Rashida Jones…or is she cheating?) and ironically breaking just about every law there is to achieve their endgame. And yes, along the way, one can expect to enjoy much zany over-the-top action sequences and many laugh out loud moments that are pleasantly not touted in the television or theatrical trailers. You got to love surprises!
So yes it’s cheesy (there’s that word again) and yes it’s predictable, but Cop Out offers a large entertainment value to effectively match your hard earned dollars that you are about to lay down for a visit. Morgan is a comedic ball-buster and Willis the same bad-a$$ grumpy cop we have known and loved over the years. The two are the perfect marriage of yin-yang. Their relationship turmoil alone will have you laughing in stitches more times than I care to count right now. If you have already seen Shutter Island and you want to escape momentarily from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, then do yourself a favor and head to your local theater this weekend to check out the new Kevin Smith directed comedy Cop Out. It’s fun ride that you won’t want to leave by the film’s end. It scores an easy A, from this reviewer, in buddy-action-comedy genre. This is a day one purchase on Blu-ray. And I never saw that coming. Have a great weekend at the movies!
Click on the link below to listen to the full length audio review.
DISCLAIMER – Link will open in a new window and you can click to play or right click to download (Save Target As) and listen later.
thing about audio reviews is you can’t skim or speed-read ’em like you can print. i’m a skim-reader, then settle on the meaty parts.
still, audio is ok depending on how well & smoothly the reviewer reads.
it’s good for non-readers.
This looks unwatchable. I’ll rent this. Maybe.
I thought the same thing Gerard, but it ended up being hysterical. If no one else, my wife will get great joy out of revisiting this again on Blu-ray!