Cop Out

Cop Out (2010)
Director: Kevin Smith
Writers: Robb and Mark Cullen
Starring: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Guillermo Diaz, Seann William Scott, Michele Trachtenberg
Rating: R
My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

When I had my previously mentioned "double feature day", the second film I watched was "Cop Out". I acquired it a Blockbuster that was going out of business, and I thought it looked funny. I was only partially right.

Bruce Willis (Die Hard), plays a cop, Jimmy Monroe, who is suspended due to a sloppy raid with his partner,  Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan; 30 Rock). They are both suspended and soon thereafter, Monroe (whose daughter (Michele Trachtenberg; Eurotrip) is getting married) finds out that his daughter's step-father (Jason Lee; My Name is Earl), who Jimmy has a...dis-taste for, wants to pay for the wedding. Jimmy insists that he will pay for it and goes the next day to sell his prized baseball card, worth quite possibly millions.

The next day, he is a victim of petty theft, and the baseball card is taken from him in the store. Monroe and Hodges track down the foul-mouthed, idiotic thief (Seann William Scott; American Pie) and he tells them that his card went to the baseball-loving gangster, Po' Boy (Guillermo Diaz; Half-Baked), and it becomes something much greater than a petty theft case.

Again, I won't give you the whole plot, but here's what I thought of it.

I thought this movie had so much more potential. Tracy Morgan can be really funny but he was too over the top for his character. Bruce Willis was brilliant as always, but even he didn't reach his full potential. This movie had some really funny moments, some not so funny moments, and some moments that should've been hilarious but were skipped over, or drawn out too much. Tracy Morgan has a really funny scene in which he interrogates a suspect using entirely movie quotes, (one of which is Die Hard), but it doesn't allow enough of a moment for anyone to get the joke. Bruce Willis has a couple one-liners that are rushed, also. The only humor that seemed correctly timed was Seann William Scott's, and he didn't appear nearly as much as the other characters.

I loved Morgan and Willis' as cops, though, because as they struggled through their every day problems, they felt real. The problem came when they tried to heighten the movie to make it realistic AND funny. Both just didn't work out. I think the part of Hodges could've been better cast (it seems like it called for more of an Eddie Murphy type), but Morgan did a passable job.

All in all, this was an entertaining movie. Seann William Scott plays Stifler in every movie, but it works for him. I would recommend this movie depending on the kind of mood you're in, as it is definitely entertaining enough to keep your attention for a couple of hours, but overall there was too much action and not enough comedy.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!

NAH