Scotty Walker Reviews Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in "Cop Out"
Scotty Walker
Issue date: 3/4/10 Section: Entertainment
Kevin Smith steps goes way outside his normal zone with a move that's a take on the cop buddy comedies of the '80s and 90's, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan.
When the movie starts, our bickering partners have been together nine years, there is no recap of how they first met, hated each other initially, and later turned out to be the perfect mismatch.
This does lead one to wonder how a screeching, paranoid dork like Paul Hodges ever became a detective, let alone one paired with the more standard action-hero Jimmy Monroe, but skipping the origin story at least allows us to cut directly to the chase.
While Willis and Morgan's characters are a homage to such duos as Lethal Weapon's Murtaugh and Riggs, they are paralleled by a duo played by Adam Brody and Kevin Pollak who exist as all out spoof, depicted as painfully modern metro-sexuals who only wish they could be true movie heroes. Meanwhile, the conflict of the movie is a stolen baseball card with which Monroe hopes to pay for his daughter's wedding allows Smith to show his fanboy side.Smith gets everything right, from a soundtrack that features mostly '80s rock and rap hits plus a retro-cool synth score by Harold Faltermeyer, to the delicate balance of laugh-out-loud dialogue with real danger.
Smith, as usual, does his own editing, which is amazing for him in a genre that's so different than he's used to, and so dependent on timing.
Since almost none of the dialogue can't be printed here you'll need to discover it for yourself. I recommend this to fans of Kevin Smith and anybody who is looking to have a good time at the movies
When the movie starts, our bickering partners have been together nine years, there is no recap of how they first met, hated each other initially, and later turned out to be the perfect mismatch.
This does lead one to wonder how a screeching, paranoid dork like Paul Hodges ever became a detective, let alone one paired with the more standard action-hero Jimmy Monroe, but skipping the origin story at least allows us to cut directly to the chase.
While Willis and Morgan's characters are a homage to such duos as Lethal Weapon's Murtaugh and Riggs, they are paralleled by a duo played by Adam Brody and Kevin Pollak who exist as all out spoof, depicted as painfully modern metro-sexuals who only wish they could be true movie heroes. Meanwhile, the conflict of the movie is a stolen baseball card with which Monroe hopes to pay for his daughter's wedding allows Smith to show his fanboy side.Smith gets everything right, from a soundtrack that features mostly '80s rock and rap hits plus a retro-cool synth score by Harold Faltermeyer, to the delicate balance of laugh-out-loud dialogue with real danger.
Smith, as usual, does his own editing, which is amazing for him in a genre that's so different than he's used to, and so dependent on timing.
Since almost none of the dialogue can't be printed here you'll need to discover it for yourself. I recommend this to fans of Kevin Smith and anybody who is looking to have a good time at the movies
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