Movie Info
Movie Name: Cop-Out
Studio: Marc Platt Productions
Genre(s): Comedy/Action
Release Date(s): February 26, 2010
MPAA Rating: R
This scene is funny because I’m dressed like a phone…right?
Detective Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) needs cash fast. His daughter Ava (Michelle Trachtenberg) is getting married and he wants to pay for the wedding. This means selling his prize 1952 Andy Pafko baseball card. Disaster strikes when Monroe is robbed at the deal by a thief named Dave (Seann William Scott), and Monroe must get the card back. Teamed with his longtime partner Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan), Monroe gets even worst news: the card has been given to kingpin drug dealer Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz). Poh Boy refuses to give the card back and Monroe and Hodges might have to get a bit dirty if they hope to retrieve the card.
Seriously guys, this movie needs some life…maybe I can add it
Directed by Kevin Smith, Cop Out has the distinction of being the first film directed by Smith that he didn’t write. The movie was ravaged by critics, and Smith came forward saying that he couldn’t work with Bruce Willis with Willis accusing him of smoking too much marijuana on set. The movie made a small profit at the box office.
I can’t say that I was excited to see Cop Out. The buddy-cops genre has been played out and it has been played out in much better style. I was pretty dead on in my pre-assessment of the movie though I tried to not let it influence me. Cop Out was a real bore.
The story doesn’t always go where you expect it go, but the writing and characters are so lazy that you
Let’s have a dull shootout!
don’t really care. Watching Cop Out feels like a chore, and it feels like the writers said “Let’s watch Lethal Weapon and 48 Hrs. and just use stuff that worked in those films”. Instead of really playing with the format, the story is just rehash of other films…at least, the movie doesn’t use the “Morris has been assigned a new partner…and he’s crazy” story.
Willis just feels like he’s doing his normal gig and it doesn’t matter what movie he’s in. He’s kind of John McClane in the movie, and it doesn’t feel like a distinctive character. Morgan is a little more fun as Willis’ paranoid partner who believes his wife Rashida Jones is cheating on him. With such generic characters, it would have been halfway amusing if there had been an almost James Bond-esque drug dealer leader or henchman, but Poh Boy (played by Guillermo Diaz) and his crew are also typical. Seann William Scott is kind of fun, but doesn’t really fit into the story in a realistic way and Willis’ family also is underused along with the unnecessary “good cops” of Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody.
If you don’t talk I’m going to force you to watch this movie over and over again!!!
The movie not only is not very distinct as a film, but also doesn’t look very distinctive. The shootouts and gunfights look like every gunfight you’ve seen. Everything looks like it was shot by textbook. The movie takes almost any potential fun out of all the scenes.
Cop Out has to be one of the most generic cop-buddy comedies I’ve seen. It isn’t the worst movie you’ll ever see but you probably will forget it soon after you see it. The movie is bloated and long and really has no spirit. I can say that I couldn’t always guess where Cop Out was going to go, but I also didn’t particularly care. After the failure Smith lashed out at critics (which generally serves no purpose other than sounding like a spoiled child…especially in this case when the movie is truly bad) and returned to his own writing for source with a horror/suspense film Red State in 2011.
