Depths of OnDemand: Let’s Be Cops

Every so often I am forced to watch some truly dreadful movies. I don’t know if the person inflicting these movies on me just enjoys watching me squirm or if there is some part of them that thinks maybe I’ll enjoy these slices of cinema that I am not usually predisposed to watching. Either way, I find it difficult to stop watching a movie once it’s begun so I usually end up seeing the garbage through to the end, knowing no good will come from it. This is the reason I even saw Let’s Be Cops.

To be clear Let’s Be Cops, while being almost aggressively terrible, is a movie I would consider watching based solely on the cast. I already have a predisposition for TV actors jumping to Film (TV was and always will be my first love and I have a deeper “relationship” with those actors than the relatively larger stars of the cinema world) and I also have a deep and abiding love for the world of comedy (stand-up, sketch, improv, and the “alternative” performers thereof). Based solely on the cast list, this move should be firmly on my sweet spot. Add to that that the fact that I work in law enforcement in some capacity and I should be all in for this one.

But, then I saw a trailer. A trailer is supposed to be the advertisement that makes you want to see a movie, and if this was the best they could come up with to cut a trailer from, this movie must be terrible. Nothing worked and it felt like a sophomoric mess that should never have been made.

Seeing the movie, I can tell you that if nothing else that the advertising was accurate. Those trailer editors should be very proud of themselves. This movie is a pile of hot garbage and keeps finding new depths to sink to. It’s stupid, ridiculous, racist, homophobic, spectacularly violent, and worst of all pointless. Not that all movies need to have a message, but this seems to take the stance that lying is bad, until it’s good but still it’s bad. Unless it lets you bang Nina Dobrev, then it’s fine. Speaking of, if this is why Dobrev left Vampire Diaries to “try new things in her career” or whatever, then she radically misjudged the cultural impact of this role.

The plot, such as it is, involves 2 friends who’s lives haven’t turned out the way they expected, who dress up like cops and then begin acting as if they were cops until they get involved in a cartoonishly insane arms dealing plot. I’m not kidding, this is what happens in this movie. Why, once they get the initial thrill of pretending to be cops, they don’t apply to be actual police officers and take us through a Police Academy retread I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want the comparison to that far better movie. Whatever the reason, Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans, Jr. scream, mug, pratfall, and shot through this mess. Neither actor is engaging, or seemingly even interested in the film as a whole. Wayans, Jr. particularly seems like he just gave up on this movie about 20 minutes in.

I don’t have words for how bad this movie is. Especially when it becomes over long and boring. Then, even a last-minute, manic Keegan-Michael Key performance can salvage anything other than a bemused chuckle from the viewer who has been beaten down by this turd. F