It's been a while since there was a really good cop-buddy-film-comedy-action movie. The last one was...48 Hours? Beverly Hills Cop? So is this one as good? No. Is it pretty good? Sure. Why not.
The story revolves around two cops, Paul (played by Tracy Morgan from 30 Rock) and Jimmy (played by Bruce Willis from...um, hmmm, I guess he's basically an unknown). Paul thinks his wife is cheating on him. Jimmy has to sell a rare baseball card to pay for his daughter's wedding so this his ex-wife's new husband doesn't do it instead. Except the card gets stolen. Now, while tracking it down they will get entwined in another big caper. What's the big caper? Good question. I've watched the film twice, but I still couldn't tell you. Yes, I watch and multitask, but I also checked out the wiki page and they didn't really explain it either so my guess is no one really knows. Not that it's that important. The big caper definitely takes a back seat to the cheating wife/baseball card storylines. But still, it would be nice to understand it. It involves gangs moving into territory and a woman in a trunk and...yeah, okay I've got nothing. If someone who pays closer attention wants to chime in feel free.
So is it any good? If by good you mean funny, yeah, it's okay. Bruce Willis is doing his thing, which is okay, and Tracy Morgan is doing his thing, which is good (although not as good as on 30 Rock) and there are plenty of funny moments, not the least of which are the scenes with Sean William Scott (American Pie movies). The problem is that all the surrounding stuff just isn't that good. Like the part of Jimmy selling the card to pay for the daughter's wedding because he doesn't want the ex's new husband to do it. Really? It just seems like such a bizarre thing/ It's one of those too clever Tarantino moments that didn't fit for me. And none of it was funny or exciting or interesting. In fact, it all just felt really petty, which might be okay if that pettiness led somewhere but it doesn't. In fact you could have taken out the ex-'s husband angle and just have his scraping to give his daughter her dream wedding and it would have been a lot stronger motivation. So all that felt a bit weird. And the big caper they get caught up in...well, like I said I don't really know what it is. There's bank accounts and territory and a woman in the trunk...but because it is played in the background it never really meant anything for me. So overall I liked the comedy, but the story itself didn't do much for me. It wasn't bad, but I would have been fine with them tossing that for a lot more funny.
Now that (tossing the story) isn't something I say a lot. I'm usually a story guy. So what happened this time? Well, let me do the writer thing and make some comparisons....
First, let's compare it to the classic 48 HOURS
Now 48 Hours is about a cop who gets a convict out of jail on a 48 hour pass to help him catch a cop killer. And to make it more personal: the criminal used the cop's gun to shoot the other officer. The story is about these two opposite people -- the white cop and the black convict -- trailing this criminal, the cop wanting to catch him, the criminal hoping to scoop up a half million dollars which is hidden somewhere. And because the criminal was Eddie Murphey back when he was actually funny, it made for a pretty awesome movie -- a good cop movie with a villain you hated sprinkled with lots of funny. But make no mistake -- it is a cop movie. And it's because it gets the cop movie right that they can fill in the space between the tense action moments with lots of humor and make for such a good movie.
Now maybe it doesn't seem fair to compare COP OUT to 48 HOURS since Cop Out clearly isn't trying to be like that, but it's important to see what happens when you shift what is usually the central element (the cop case) to the background. Without that focus everything drifts. And it makes it hard to make the cop element compelling since the protagonist isn't focused on it. It becomes a story of two cops who accidently make a big bust. Which might work if they were shown as incompetent, Inspector Clouseau-types, but they aren't. They aren't geniuses, but they aren't total idiots either. So where does that leave the viewer? Well, kind of in the middle. It isn't played as a cop movie, but the situation isn't fully played as a comedy either.
So how do you do it -- having the big cop story in the background so you can fous on the smaller stuff -- so it works? Well, for that let's look at an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
THE ZEPPO, episode 3X13 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
This episode deals with one of the sidekick characters, Xander. Xander is the chump. He gets beaten up by bullies, rejected by girls, hurt in the vampire-fighting, etc. In this episode Xander decides to try to become cool and to do that he borrows a relative's cool car, thinking this will be his thing, he will be "car guy." While this is going on, Buffy and the rest of the gang realize a group of vampires is going to open a doorway to hell that will destroy them all (a doorway conveniently located in the school library). So while Buffy the others are trying to stop the end of the world, Xander is having his car adventure. And what's that? Well, it involves a pretty girl, then involves pissing off a psychopath and decides to let Xander join his gang if he drives them around town getting the parts to make a bomb that will blow up the school. So now, while everyone else is occupied, Xander has to stop the psychopath and his gang. And because Xander is the goofball character, it's all pretty funny too.
So why does the actual story of Buffy's "The Zeppo" work while Cop Out doesn't? It comes down to two central elements. First, both have the bigger stories play out in the background, but to make that work the story that's playing out in the foreground needs to be as cool or even cooler. If you want us to pay attention to A and not B, then make A cooler so we will WANT to look at A. In ZEPPO, while Buffy is trying to stop the end of the world, Xander is getting caught up with girl, a gangs and a plot to blow up the school. Now the apocalypse is pretty good, but blowing up the school is pretty cool too. It's also nice that it works off the main story -- he has a smaller, but comparable goal. The others keep him away from the apocalypse to try to save him, but he gets caught up in something dangerous anyway. Then, because the apocylpse and the bomb end up in the same place (the high school), in the end he not only stops the bad guys, but saves all his friends too. Not too shabby.
The second thing is emotion. In ZEPPO, the story is about a guy who gets tossed aside by monsters, by girls, by bullies, and even by his friends, eventually learning to stand up for himself and while he started out thinking he needed a car to be cool, he realized he was okay being himself. Maybe not the most original idea, but there's some real emotion to it. Watching this guy get his chops busted again and again and in the end becoming a hero, even if no one knows it...it's pretty nice. And that emotion makes you really root for Xander through all the wildness -- not just rooting for him to stop the bomb, but rooting for him during all the craziness. So what's the emotion in COP OUT? Couldn't tell you. There really isn't anything. I understand a dad wanting to give his daughter the wedding of her dreams, but it wasn't like if he didn't get the baseball card the daughter wouldn't get the wedding. So it really was about not letting his ex-wife's husband pay for the wedding. Is that really something to root for? I just didn't care one way or another. This is especially true becuase I didn't really know any of these other characters. We meet them for one, maybe two scenes and then don't see them again until the end of the movie. I didn't know the daughter, so I didn't care if she got this expensive wedding or not. And the ex- was a bit of a d*ck, but the cop was being a pr*ck too. It all just seemed very petty. So really I wasn't rooting for any of it. I just didn't care. The other storyline -- with the cop thinking his wife was cheating -- wasn't much better. I just didn't care. She is, she isn't...I would have been fine with it either way.
Which is where COP OUT really fails. I just didn't care if the cops succeeded or failed. They were likable, so I was kind of rooting for them, I guess, I mean I wasn't rooting for them to fail. But does he get the baseball card, dies the duaghter get the wedding, the stuff with the ex-, thw wife cheating -- it just didn't make an impression on me one way or the other. Which just leaves the comedy. Which also means the movie could have been better, but is was probably never going to live up to 48 HOURS or THE ZEPPO. Great movies/tv make us care.
But at least it did have some funny.
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