COP OUT

COP OUT

The music is way too similar to "Beverly Hills Cop". The casting is way too similar to "16 Blocks". The style is way too similar to "Lethal Weapon". Yet "Cop Out" fails to even approach the quality of either of those films.

Director Kevin Smith's previous work included "Zack and Miri Make a Porn", "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" - so he hasn't quite found his comfort zone yet. Nor has he quite got the hang of casting.

A quickly fading Bruce Willis plays Jimmy Monroe, the so-called tough half of a cop team - Tracy Morgan plays the comic relief Paul Hodges. This is a combo package more nauseating than the spinach and hot dogs combo platter at Betty Burps Eat & Flee!

The film begins with Hoges conducting a quasi good cop/ bad cop interrogation of a drug trafficker. His method includes using every bad cliched line from several non-connected films. This bit was meant to get the audience into a laughing frenzy.

Alas, I'm pretty sure this is something that looked better on paper than it comes across on film. The bit is about as funny as a submarine with a screen door.

After interrogating the suspect he and Monroe go to a bust the big dealer, but it goes bad quickly and their stoolie gets killed. This causes them to be suspended.

Meanwhile in Monroes personal life, his daughter is about to get married in what she hopes will be her dream wedding. But the wedding will cost $48,000.00, which is far more than he has. To prevent her step-father from usurping him, he opts to sell his rare baseball card. But the card is stolen during a heist.

This starts the pursuit of the guy's who stole the card which amazingly comes back to the drug bust that went wrong. It seems as though the drug boss is a baseball memorabilia collector himself.

Yeah, the movie is about the pursuit of a baseball card.

This wouldn't have been so bad had either one of them been even remotely funny. No, the real humor is at the hands of Sean Williams Scott who plays the thief who stole the card and an all-round smart ass. His shtick wouldn't have been so bad had he been teamed with someone other than Morgan and Willis. Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody were cast as a team of so-called comedic foils inside the police station - kind of like Judge Reinhold and John Ashton were in "Beverly Hills Cop". However, their timing is off.

There is another profanity laced scene involving John D'Leo as a child car thief. That was actually pretty funny, but not enough to to justify wasting $10 to see the movie.

"Cop Out" marks the continued down slide of Bruce Willis' career as he continues to push himself off as Egg Head [from the old Batman TV series]. For Tracy Morgan, it is status quo - I have yet to be even moderately impressed with him as a comedian or actor. If there is a redeeming actor it's Rashida Jones, the lovely young lady that is symbolic of everything beautiful in a Russian/African mix! Too bad her talent (and beauty) is wasted in this effort. --GEOFFREY BURTON

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