Cop Out (2010) **/*****
I don’t find many things more cinematically embarrassing than how much I was into Kevin Smith when I was a teenager. When Clerks came out in ’94 it was like nothing my young mind had ever seen before. It was raw, guerilla film making. There was no money for set, cast, anything, so the focus of the film was 100% on the script. The dialogue had a bit of a fast talking His Girl Friday feel to it that heightened the reality of the film in a way that felt totally fresh to me. Smith was the first filmmaker to fill his script with modern pop culture references, he took raunchy sex talk past the point of what was formerly acceptable to hilarious results. This was the first bit of filmmaking created by my generation and aimed toward my generation and it felt like a promise of great things to come. Critics panned Mallrats, but I didn’t seem to care. Sure it was glossier and more mainstream digestible than Clerks, it was less about character and more about the laughs, but it was still filled to the brim with great jokes that I hadn’t heard before. Jokes about Star Wars, jokes about comic books, jokes about video game hockey, jokes about farting during fellatio. This wasn’t my dad’s teen sex comedy, this was SMART. Oh, the folly of youth. And Smith was able to quickly rebound with Chasing Amy anyways. He sacrificed a bit of budget to do another small film, but he got the studio executive’s opinions out of the mix. This was Kevin Smith unfettered; the characters felt real, the story was as much about their struggles as it was the raunchy jokes. This film was, clearly, the heir to Clerks and the direction that Smith’s career would take. And then he made Dogma.
Dogma was where the wheels really came off the train. It seemed more like a marketing scheme than a film. Its characters weren’t people, they were angels, devils, poop monsters. The story wasn’t raw and relatable like Clerk and Amy. It was absurdist fantasy. The focus seemed to be less on the dialogue and more on creating an “askewniverse” of fake brands so Smith would have new product to push at his comic book shop. Stoner, slacker comedy was becoming a business, and once something becomes a business it becomes old hat. If Dogma was the chink in the armor, then Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was the complete downfall of Smith as a voice in Hollywood. His characters went from people to caricatures. His clever dialogue was completely jettisoned in favor of broad sight gags. His references to pop culture were replaced by references to Kevin Smith movies. Jay and Bob was completely masturbatory and lame. Smith has struggled to find a voice since. He tried to shed all of his past baggage and write a stand alone script with Jersey Girl, but it wasn’t well received. He tried to fall full steam back into his own universe with Clerks 2, but the genie was out of the bottle and the results were embarrassing. He tried to ape Judd Apatow’s voice with Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but his script wasn’t as funny and didn’t have as much heart as Judd’s, so it became the first Seth Rogen vehicle to disappoint after a string of successes. After a decade and a half of everyone doing pop culture references, everyone doing raunch, and everyone trying to do “Tarantino” dialogue, Smith’s work looks worn. He is now an artist who has failed to stay with the times, has failed to reinvent himself, and failed to stay relevant. Not only does his current work look tame and derivative next to its competition, but his first couple films have gotten long in the tooth, aging poorly next to other films in the dramedy genre made by guys like Judd Apatow that have been able to take what Smith started and develop things in more interesting directions. So with this we are brought to Cop Out, Smith’s first attempt at directing a film that was written by somebody else.
Despite the fact that the script was the product of someone else’s mind, there are a few of Smith’s hallmarks inherent to the film and it’s not hard to see why he would have wanted to pick this script as his first journeyman director project. Cop Out is littered with references to other films. The story revolves around a male duo palling around and trying to go from goofs to successes. The only difference between this and some of Smith’s other films is that instead of a duo of twenty something slackers the focus is on a duo of cops played by Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Bruce’s character feels a lot like characters he’s played before. He’s divorced, a bit weathered, a bit on the outs with his family. It’s not hard to make the leap and say that we’re supposed to be getting a John McLane throwback feel. Morgan is doing his standard manic, motor mouth schtick, his wacky policing antics seeming like they’re taking place in one of the fake, parody movies they have the Tracy Jordan character star in on 30 Rock. It’s clear that Cop Out is trying to work as an homage to past buddy cop films like 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon, with a grizzled veteran cop paired up with a loose cannon. The problem is that we’re never given any reason why these two are together. Those buddy cop movies that have become modern classics always showed us the two main character’s introduction, their initial period of chaffing, and the shared experiences that eventually lead to them coming together. Here, Willis and Morgan’s characters have already been partnering for years, it’s never explained to us why Willis’ character would put up with Morgan’s. And to make matters worse, it doesn’t just feel like these two cops shouldn’t be partnering, it doesn’t even feel like they should be in the same movie. Willis acts like a real person, he is competent at his job, he talks like a real cop would, he is given a struggle to overcome (a half baked plot about retrieving a stolen baseball card so he can sell it and pay for his daughter’s wedding, thus earning her esteem). Conversely, Morgan is completely insane. He acts completely inappropriately, he speaks in a series of strung together movie references, he gets in over the top childish arguments, he almost seems to grin and wink at the camera after long trains of semi-coherent riffing. One is coming from the semi-realistic world of buddy cop movies and the other from a world of slapstick Will Ferrell comedies. We’re never given a reason why these two men are allowed to exist alongside one another and it just makes the tone of the film confusing. Because of Morgan’s cartoonish behavior the action the film is never able to be taken seriously or succeed. Because of Willis’ grounded, dour storyline the film is never able to really take off as a comedy
If Cop Out fails as an action movie and fails as a comedy, is there anything it succeeds at? A lot of what they’ve tried to accomplish here hinges on parody. I neglected to do much plot recap, because the story isn’t really that memorable, important to the film, and you’ve seen it all before. The narrative structure of Cop Out exists solely as a series of scenes and situations that you’ve seen in countless other films before. The problem here is that parody is supposed to comment on or skewer the material that it’s referencing. Cop Out is content to just ride on its predecessor’s coat tails. What we’re given is less parody and more homage. I think my reaction to the film’s score is a good analogy to describe my reaction to the film as a whole. What we’re given is a dated, cheesy, synth sounding score that seemingly attempts to be a sound alike of Beverly Hills Cop’s main theme ‘Axel F’. The music isn’t close enough to the original (due to legal issues I imagine) to be a direct reference to it, but it also isn’t good enough to stand on it’s own as legit film music. So what we’re given is lame, midi sounding music that we’re supposed to accept because it’s supposed to remind us of something that was formerly famous. Is homage reason enough for something to exist or should it have to be able to stand on it’s own as a product with its own worth? I think homage can be an effective tool to add depth and layer to a film, drawing upon the collective experience of film history to add an emotional connection between your audience and what you’ve created, but here it’s overused and becomes an excuse to not have to make a real film.
Despite my reservations with the main characters, some of the supporting characters work to add something to the film. Jason Lee always works well with Kevin Smith, and he’s fun to watch in his brief appearances as Willis’ daughter’s new smarmy, successful stepfather. He makes you want to punch him in the face even if you don’t care much about the protagonist that he’s annoying. Adam Brody and Kevin Pollack play the obligatory pair of rival cops to the main characters. These two actors put together seemed to me to be about the most random pairing you could have come up with. They’re not really given much to do in the story other than have absurdly pointless conversations about things like cowboy boots and to look weird standing next to each other. For some reason this worked for me and I started thinking I would have rather watched the awkward bonding of these two guys rather than the two main characters. A movie where Kevin Pollack teaches Adam Brody about the finer points of boot wearing while solving murders? Sign me up! Mexican actress Ana de la Reguera is funny as a lost in translation drug lord’s mistress that Willis and Morgan have to take on as a witness. Her physical comedy while trying to communicate with the American cops is good and she really sold the absurd romantic subplot between her and Morgan’s characters making the whole situation rather hilarious. It’s a shame that this and Nacho Libre have been her big attempts at breaking out into English speaking films. I think she’s got talent. Rashida Jones isn’t given anything to do as Morgan’s wife, but she’s really cute and always a welcome addition to a cast in my book. Sean William Scott was my only complaint as far as the supporting cast goes. He plays a cat burglar roped into helping Willis and Morgan with their “investigation” and he doesn’t add anything to the proceedings other than painfully lame five year old humor and a bunch of mugging to the camera.
The story of Kevin Smith’s career from the beginning was that he was a self admittedly bad director, but that he made up for it with his fresh, progressive screen writing that nobody else in the business could match. Unfortunately, what once looked like a strong, unique voice has over time been exposed as a limited bag of tricks. Though he still has a core group of vocal, ardent supporters, Smith has now failed to find a formula for mainstream success time and time again. This film didn’t use his name or his credits at all in it’s advertising, trying to rely solely on the star power of Willis and Morgan to sell tickets, and it still opened as a box office disappointment. At this point Smith has tried to keep his career moving by going in a more grounded, less slapsticky direction, by jumping back into what brought him to the game, by trying to emulate the formula of other successful filmmakers, and now by trying to go it as a work for hire utility director. None of the approaches have been successful in my eyes and I don’t know what could possibly be next for a formerly script first filmmaker whose scripts have now failed him. He does seem to have a strong rapport with his actors, and always gets good performances out of everybody. He’s got that loyal fan base that gobble up his films on DVD and always at least get the studios’ initial investment back. Is breaking even enough to justify a continued film career though? Are a couple of good performances in movies that accomplish nothing but parroting other works reason enough for these films to exist? For me the answer is no. Maybe it’s my disappointment in my adolescent hopes for this auteur failing to come to fruition coloring my opinion, but I wish Smith would choose to go in another direction with his career and stop making movies. As far as this movie goes, Cop Out had enough amusing Tracy Morgan insanity and decent supporting turns to win itself a star with me, but nothing more.
