Good Cops, Silly Cops

Lest you were thinking director Kevin Smith was just too fat to fly Southwest these days, today marks the arrival in theaters of Cop Out, a buddy cop movie that ought to remind you there’s more to him than what meets the eye.

You know like, yeah, he’s a self-described “sedentary processed-foods eater,” but darn it, he has a job, too.

What a shame he performs it so unevenly. Smith follows up his truly superior Zack and Miri Make a Porno, released two years ago, with this, an eh! movie that’s just bloated with idiocy.

You know what, though? That’s peachy if you’re in the mood for a few laughs. After all, Cop Out never pretends to be anything more than a big ol’ guffaw fest.

The movie stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan – who should be hint No. 1 for ya that Smith ain’t reaching for the most highbrow levels of hilarity. They play longtime NYPD partners (they’re celebrating their ninth anniversary, or, at least, Morgan’s Paul is) hot on the trail of a stolen, rare, mint-condition baseball card Willis’ Jimmy needs to sell to pay for his daughter’s (Michelle Trachtenberg) dream wedding.

The card, though, has fallen in the hands of a memorabilia-obsessed gangster (Guillermo Diaz, Trachtenberg’s co-star on TV’s Mercy, playing against that type to the point of turning his Poh Boy into a non-threatening cartoon), so together Jimmy and Paul – “partners-against-crime” per the latter – must work to tidy up an early-into-the-movie screw-up that I neither need to explain nor really want to, to get Jimmy’s baseball card back, and maybe solve the mystery of Paul’s wife’s alleged infidelity.

Along the way, they meet a dirty-minded thief played by Seann William Scott, who steals every he’s in, uncover a big and dangerous power play of Poh Boy’s, and make with the funny, alright (because it’s edgy in that crass, easy way), but not with the smart.

Cop Out is pretty run of the mill, and even though it has its moments, it’s so phoned in it’s just a crime.

My Rating **

Photo: Warner Bros.