Cop Out
R (pervasive strong language, sexual references, violence, brief sexuality); 102 min.
"It's not stealing," protests NYPD Detective Paul Hodges as he readies for his "performance" interrogating a suspect. "It's called homage."
Since he's played by comic Tracy Morgan (TV's 30 Rock), homage is mispronounced. Since the movie is Cop Out, the "homage" is to '80s cop movies -- a fond remembrance of those jokey, bloody Beverly Hills Cop/Lethal Weapon romps of Eddie and Mel.
And since the movie was directed (though not written) by fanboy Kevin Smith, Paul's "homage" rant to a suspect is snippets of movie dialogue -- from An Officer and a Gentleman to Die Hard, In the Heat of the Night to Star Wars.
Cop Out is a cop buddy picture that reminds us what awful eye-rollers those movies often were. It's got the generic "foreign" villains (Mexicans, this time), the chatterbox "perp" who is arrested and then comes along for the ride (Seann William Scott steals the movie in the Joe Pesci role). It's got '80s action icon Bruce Willis, as Detective Jimmy Monroe, playing straight-man to an always over-the-top Morgan.
But poor plotting, inept staging and slack pacing remind us that Smith ( Clerks) is better at riffs than at making functional, wholly realized films.
Funny bits interrupt the dead stretches -- a hysterical and heavily armed woman protecting her property while questioning the manhood of New York's finest, Scott playing the "stop repeating what I say" game and an 11-year-old car thief who curses a blue streak but fears his mama. As in the rest of the Smith canon, there's a juvenile fascination with sex -- a monologue about monkey sexual practices, for instance.
But there's a dated and played feel to much of this, from the "Black Betty" to Beastie Boys soundtrack, the jokes that don't land, and situations and generic characters (Kevin Pollak plays a rival detective) that add nothing to the film.
