Who doesn’t like Kevin Smith? He’s a good writer and even a solid director. For years he’s continued to deliver a heap of solid work, Clerks and Chasing Amy being his best. Where does Cop Out rank amongst his body of work? Not too high. It’s a so-so satire that pokes fun of, while oddly embracing, cop cliches.
These conventions range from unintentional sexual tension between partners, cheesy synth music to the odd couple cop relationship. It implores all these elements and they all make for the film’s brighter spots. This is the more comedic and low-brow version of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are an unlikely pair; Paul the outgoing and cartoonish one; Jimmy being the hard-edged one with a sense of humor. Unlike most films, Jimmy isn’t portrayed as an uptight prude. He’s even a little goofy like Paul. Lately though, Jimmy has hit hard times with his daughter’s wedding coming up. With a cop’s salary, how is he going to pay for it? He has a plan: Jimmy intends to sell a much-loved and nostalgic baseball card from his youth. This card will pay for the wedding alone. While dealing with a memorabilia dealer, the store Jimmy is attending gets, conveniently, robbed and his baseball card gets stolen. Now, both Jimmy and Paul must embark on a mission to retrieve the baseball card, handle with a local drug dealer and Paul’s paranoia that his wife is cheating on him.
Yes, the baseball card is the MacGuffin. When else has such an item been used as such a plot-driving device? That’s something that tells you right away that Cop Out is silly and, like many of Smith’s films, it knows that. This is a self-aware over-the-top comedy that embraces the ludicrous side, for better and worse.
For the most part, this is Morgan’s show. He’s given the most to do and all his moments of craziness are genuinely entertaining. While the subplot with his wife, played by the lovable Rashida Jones, is half-baked and unneeded, it’s still worthwhile to see Morgan act paranoid. But then it’s still rather disappointing to see Jones left in the dust. She’s underutilized here, as she usually is. Someone give the girl something to do. She can clearly handle it.
Smith’s films always have a sense of nostalgia. Whether it be a pulp culture-fueled interrogation scene with Morgan quoting everything from Planet of the Apes to In the Heat of the Night, Smith always seems to find time to make references to the geeky film world he hails from. Sadly, he hasn’t made a film half as good as the classics he clearly loves.