Man on Film: Cop Out

Randomly having decided to take in a movie Sunday night, we went out to Cop Out with open minds.

Holy shit was it bad.

It's not like I don't get what the Cullen Brothers were trying to do when they wrote the movie. It's clear they were trying to make a buddy cop movie paying homage to the Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop franchises. What those movies (especially the first in each series) had, though, were solid screenplays. They had plots. They had laughs.

This? Pretty thin on all of that.

Really, with the exception of Seann William Scott, there wasn't anything to like. Bruce Willis seemed like he was mailing it in (and I'm a big fan of Bruce Willis) and had a shit character to start with. Tracy Morgan's schtick wore thin after about 90 seconds. The next 90 minutes were interminable. Kevin Pollack was terrible. Guillermo Diaz was horribly miscast as the Mexican gang boss. Zero gravitas.
Also, someone decided that it was a good time to give Harold Faltermeyer work again. Look, I fucking love Fletch and Beverly Hills Cop. I love their scores, too.

But there was a time and a place, and it's not 2010. It didn't work in Kuffs or Tango & Cash. Why would it work now?

But what it all really boils down to is that there are not enough laughs. It's a buddy cop comedy that's supposed to hearken back to a better time in which buddy cop movies delivered both on the action and the laughs and fails on both counts. And I could go on from here, but really, what's the point? If it fails miserably at what it's trying to do, then it's a failure, right?

I had some hope for Kevin Smith after the surprisingly enjoyable Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but that goodwill has been spent, even if he wasn't the screenwriter.