I was excited at the prospect of Kevin Smith directing a buddy cop movie. The original title, A Couple of Dicks, hinted at some of the irreverence that made Smith famous. Warner Bros. changed the title to Cop Out for marketing purposes then proceeded to market it to death, oddly leaving mention of Smith out of the campaign. Even though he didn’t write it, I had hopes that Smith’s presence would have at least helped fill in the cracks or stretch the funny if needed.

Well it was sorely needed and sadly, it didn’t work. It was almost like Kevin Smith directing a movie written by someone not as talented trying to write a Kevin Smith movie. Wait, that’s actually exactly what it was. It was supposed to pay homage to this type of movie but it was just a lazy, uninspired copy. Of a copy. For what it’s worth, everyone else in the theatre where I saw it was at least 20 years older than me and they couldn’t stop laughing. I guess that’s something.

Time for a little SPOILER TALK. Below are some of my random, non-sequential spoiler-filled thoughts and rants about the movie. Leave your comments about the movie below.

SPOILERS

– The movie opens up with the interrogation scene from the trailer where Paul (Tracy Morgan) is trying to get information from a criminal by using lines from other cop movies. He starts to go through a whole list of movies (Training Day, Scarface, Heat). When he gets into movies that don’t belong in this thought process (Schindler’s List, Dirty Dancing) it gets a little old. The rest of the police force standing outside the room cheering and clapping is weird and beyond me.

– When the informant agrees to help set up a sting at his cell phone store, Paul is out front dressed as a cell phone. Why would you draw that much attention to yourself? Why do I think that is a bad idea but these guys have been partners for 9 years and think it’s ok? And why does he keep wearing the cell phone outfit so long?

– Adam Brody and Kevin Pollack, as the obligatory rival partners on the force, might be the most unbelievable cop partner pairing I’ve ever seen on film. No one should expect Brody to be worth a damn, but Pollack can’t lean on that crutch.

– Jimmy (Bruce Willis) pleads with his boss not to suspend him for 30 days because he is counting on that money to pay for his daughter’s wedding. We find out in the next scene that his daughter’s wedding is $48,000. Does he make that much in a month or was he close and just needed a little more to get there? He is too proud to let his ex-wife’s new husband pay for the wedding so he tries to sell a vintage baseball card that will net him more than enough to pay for the wedding.

– Please tell me this whole movie won’t be about finding a baseball card.

– You know how when you see a commercial and they want to use a specific song but don’t want to pay for it so they change a couple of notes to make it different enough to call their own while allowing the audience to make the desired connection? They used that same program with the Beverly Hills Cop theme song (basically, they had Harold Faltermeyer who scored BHC and Cop Out, write the same song for this movie).

– Jason Lee is underused as Jimmy’s ex-wife’s current husband Roy. As many times as he has worked with Smith he should have been able to make better use of him in his handful of scenes. Plus, I almost don’t recognize Jason Lee anymore without his moustache.

– Seann William Scott plays a petty criminal who robs the collectibles store as Jimmy is making the sale for his baseball card. Once he is captured later in the movie, he annoys Jimmy and Paul to the point that they drag him behind a car and threaten to shoot him in the face. But when they think they need help getting into a second story window, they post his bail and recruit him to help. When he falls and breaks his neck, Paul just gives Jimmy a boost and he’s in. What. The. Fuck.

– So let me get this straight, Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz) tells Jimmy and Paul that if he helps them get his stolen BMW back that he will trade it for Jimmy’s baseball card. They go through the trouble of getting the car back then Poh Boy sends his brother Juan after them shooting. They already went through the work, did he think Paul and Jimmy were just going to steal the car and not give it back? Why not just let them bring it to him? Better yet, how did Juan know where they were? If he knew, why not just go get the car himself?

– It’s sad that the funniest parts of the movie were ruined by overplaying in the trailer that wasn’t that funny to begin with.

– After Jimmy leaves Paul and Gabriela in the hotel room and she gets in the shower, how on Earth did Paul not realize she was in there longer than she should have been?

– Bruce Willis has done the cop movie before (well) so he just phones it in here. Tracy Morgan must’ve recognized it early on because he is working overtime to try and compensate — which makes him less funny.

Dammit, this whole movie really was about finding a baseball card…

What did you think of COP OUT? How does it compare to other Kevin Smith movies? How does it compare to other buddy cop movies?