User Reviews

So help me, I found Cop Out to be not completely bad. Yes, that's a backhanded compliment, but I assure you that it's completely deserved. Cop Out, from its inane title to its derivative plot, has no business being anything but a hokey hoedown of banal buddy cop dopey behavior. And yet's it's not as gut-wrenchingly awful as all that.

Cop Out stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as veteran police partners on the trail of a gangbanger (Guillermo Diaz) who loves baseball memorabilia and who just happened to steal Willis' super-valuable baseball card, the one he was going to have to sell to finance his daughter's wedding; better to do that than have his wife's new, rich husband pay for it all.

But that cop-movie aspect is almost irrelevant. What matters, and the only thing that really puts this one in the same general universe as the likes of, say, Lethal Weapon (in terms of approach, not overall quality), is the thrust-and-parry repartee between straight-arrow Willis (a 180 from his John McClane character/caricature) and loose-cannon, uber-hip Morgan. They're funny together, and they're given funny things to say in funny situations. That helps a lot.

What's puzzling about this movie is that Kevin Smith directed it, the first of his that he didn't also write. That's puzzling because the dialog isn't really this movie's strong point. If I hadn't seen Smith's name attached to this in writing, I'd never have guessed he had had a hand in it.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter much, as it's just plain not terrible. You can tell I'm trying not to go overboard in my hyperbole, right? I want to present you with a level-headed, even-handed look at whether this is worth your time. And it is, with lowered expectations. It's amusing, although not for the whole family to watch.

Cop Out has a few laughs, but otherwise it's a surprisingly bland experience. It suffers from a generic storyline, questionable performances and the simple fact that almost none of the intended sources of humour achieve the desired effect.

Bruce Willis (an old timer) and Tracy Morgan (a new timer) are an odd couple indeed, but they had potential. The problem is that their levels of commitment to the film are polarized. Willis seems lazy and uninterested never putting much effort into it. Morgan on the other hand, tries way too hard. His larger than life style of crudeness is more clumsy than funny, and he upstages pretty much everyone else in the cast.

After about ten minutes, we have a pretty good idea of how this film is gonna play out, but we go with it in the hope that the trip is worth while. Unfortunately there are more silly contrivances and poorly written lines than there are laughs. The only time when Cop Out is funny (and remotely clever) is over a Good Cop Bad Cop routine that Willis and Morgan have. There are enough action movie jokes to make it clear to the audience that at least Kevin Smith has the self-awareness necessary for satire. But from what I saw, Cop Out isn't really a satire at all. It no better or worse than any other failed cop/comedy. I'm not sure if it's laziness or lack of thinking behind it, but Cop Out hasn't got the goods

When did we become so uptight about comedies and about things that makes us laugh? When did we become so demanding about jokes and humor? It's a mystery to me that viewers didn't get a clue about what was so funny in "Cop Out", an homage to action-humored flicks of the 1980's but brought into a new decade. This film is light, well intentioned, hilariously funny and with good performances by the unusual team made by Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan.

Willis and Morgan play two suspended detectives with some personal goals to achieve. Willis wants to pay for his daughter's wedding and he needs money for it, and he would get the money by selling a rare baseball card but it was stolen from him and he needs to get back; Morgan's character doesn't trust his wife so much believing that she has an affair with the neighbor, so he keeps investigating possible affairs. But both of these cops are on the run trying to find Willis card that end up on the hands of some bad guys.

The plot is silly but that's what is funny about "Cop Out". Not only the team made by Willis & Morgan were cool but the team made by Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody as the serious detectives were responsible for the most interesting and funny moments of the film; Seann William Scott goes very well with his usual comedy style, here playing a thief. The only problem with this film is the villain played by Guillermo Diaz, because this guy is so dangerous that there's no sense of comedy about him, it's not funny, and when director Kevin Smith tries to make of him a funny guy it is just too forced, weird.

The 1980's references and the film references (mentioned by the film buff detective played by Morgan) are the best. Harold Faltermeyer's musical score in a moment taken from "Beverly Hills Cop" was a nice and funny reference (you watch the scene and you instantly remember where did they took from). And the references of "Die Hard", "Beetlejuice", "In the Heat of the Night" and many other classics, used in a comic and interesting way but it only works if you know the mentioned titles.

An easy entertainment, simple and very funny. 10/10

Kevin Smith directs but does not write this tribute to 1980s buddy cop films.

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are the mismatched pair. Jimmy (Bruce Willis) and Paul (Tracy Morgan) on suspension from a drug bust gone wrong. Jimmy decides to sell an antique baseball card to help pay for his daughter's wedding but when making the transaction he gets robbed and the card is sold to a notorious criminal.

The pair then go about retrieving the card, even by finding one of the crooks who robbed him (Sean William Scott) to help them out.

At the same time they come across a drug lord who has kidnapped someone and Paul thinks his wife is having an affair.

With a music score by Harold Faltermeyer this film certainly wants you to think of Beverly Hills Cop, Running Scared, Turner & Hooch, Tango & Cash as well as other 80s mismatched buddy comedies.

The trouble is the script here is rubbish, many of the side characters are annoying and there is no chemistry between Morgan and Willis. In fact Willis is just sleepwalking it here. I do not think he even tries to act any more.

The story is derivative and none of the so called funny antics add much. Sure Smith can bring out a few mild laughs here and there but this is poor from him.

This movie was alright, but it failed to become something spectacular and memorable.

First of all, I am going to comment on the cast and the acting. As for Bruce Willis, well his acting is great, as usual, and he was good for this role. Now, for me, what really carried this movie was the character that Seann William Scott played, it was hilarious, even though it was just a supporting role. He was so cool in this role and I loved every moment of it. Now, on to Tracy Morgan, well I have to say that I found him amazingly annoying in this role, and I just wanted to reach in there and .... oh well, never the less, I think a guy like Chris Rock or Chris Tucker might have been better for this particular role.

Moving on to the story. Well, the plot and story was good, and constantly moving, so you weren't really bored at any point in the movie. And there were lots of hilarious scenes and moments as well. And there were also just enough twists and turns in the story to make it interesting.

The music in this movie sort of made me feel like I was watching a re-make of the old Eddie Murphy movies "Beverly Hills Cop". At times it was like the music was a remix or a homage to the music from those movies. That was kind of a bit too much for me.

I hadn't actually heard anything about this movie, prior to picking it up for the first time. But of course, by that way I had no expectations to the movie, which I think worked well in favor of the movie. The movie does provide good entertainment, but there isn't much in it that you haven't already seen in other movies. And for me, personally, this is not the type of movie that I would watch a second time around.

'Cop Out' is perhaps Kevin Smith's most 'un-Kevin Smith' film. It lacks the brand of humour his previous works had. Even though he has made his share of bad films next to a few great ones, the jokes usually work. In 'Cop Out' most of them fall flat. The story (if there is one) has no direction at all. The characters are annoying. Supporting characters appear and disappear randomly. In Smith's defence, he wasn't part of the writing department (though he was involved in the editing) and the script is just one big mess. I still wonder why he decided to make this? Even the actors seem to lack interest. Tracy Morgan is completely miscast and he has no chemistry with any of his costars. Actually none of the actors have chemistry. Bruce Willis too is unimpressive. Perhaps he's finally tired of playing the same kind of role over and over again. The title is somewhat right for the movie although I don't think it ever had potential.

This is supposed to be a comedy, allegedly. I only know that because it's advertised as a comedy, though - you certainly wouldn't know because of any funny moments in the film. It's a buddy cop movie, where Bruce Willis looks as though he's overdosed on Valium and Tracy Morgan makes up for that by doing what I can only describe as a minstrel show routine.

I don't want to get on my high horse about what's supposed to be a light-hearted action cop movie, but then again I didn't want to get angry after a light-hearted action cop movie, either. Angry about Morgan's performance, a gibbering, cavorting, screeching act that wouldn't have been out of place in the days of Stepin Fetchit. Angry about the fact that no one involved seemed to give a toss - in fact they might as well have spent the whole movie just standing there, holding up two middle fingers at the audience.

But I'm angry most of all at Kevin Smith, the director of this piece of utter garbage. He used to be talented. He used to make great movies like Clerks, Dogma, even Mallrats. Yeah, that's right, I'm the guy who liked Mallrats. These days he churns out lazy rubbish and then goes on Twitter and whines at anyone who dares to criticise it. He's thrown his talent away, and he's so wrapped up in the bubble of his own self-importance that he doesn't seem to realise it. By making a film like this, and clearly not caring at all about how it turned out, he's shown his complete contempt for movie-goers, fans and the smoking wreckage of his own career. Well done, Kevin. Well done.

Kevin Smith's first directing gig that he didn't write himself, "Cop Out," finds the director re-teaming with his "Live Free or Die Hard" co-star, Bruce Willis, as well as Tracy Morgan and Seann William Scott, who both starred in his 2001 film and quite possibly the biggest inside-joke put to film, "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back."

More than that, though, the film is a brilliant throwback to the glory days of such 80's buddy cop franchises as "Lethal Weapon" and "Beverly Hills Cop." You'll recognize key dialog from the former while the composer for the latter, Harold Faltermeyer, makes a glorious return to the genre with a quirky retro score that sets the mood just right. Bruce Willis plays the straight-man to Tracy Morgan's...well...Tracy Morgan is really just playing every character he's ever played here, but the way in which he bounces off of Willis (who himself seems to be trying hard to keep a straight face in many scenes) keeps it from feeling tired or stale. While this odd-couple/cop formula has been done to death in the past, it works for this film and is done in a loving way that pays tribute rather than re-hashes.

Smith, whose films are mostly talk, proves himself to be a competent action director at times throughout the film. It's funny to think that the man who made "Clerks" made a polished studio film such as this, but it's a sign of maturity more than selling-out, so rest easy fanboys. The script by Mark & Robb Cullen is whip-smart, witty and never leaves you longing for a laugh. Even if you don't gel with the story about a rare baseball card landing into the lap of a high-powered drug-lord, you'll always find yourself laughing along with the film. It also helps, too, that each and every player seems to have had a good time making the film, and that translates into the final result.

One could make the argument that Smith himself could have re-written the film and made it all the funnier, but much of the humor in the film comes from the on-screen chemistry. It's about as good of an 80's buddy cop throwback as you'll get, and is rounded out with a brilliant cast that also includes Guillermo Diaz, Kevin Pollak, Adam Brody and Jason Lee, among others. Go into expecting a simple yet effective way of just how fun an action movie can be. As for Smith, he's shown significant range, and hopefully the film will help break him out from just being the guy who directed those Jay & Silent Bob flicks. Thankfully, "Cop Out" is anything but.

I guess you could call a few scenes mildly amusing but this movie never delivered any laugh out loud moments. It certainly never rings true as an action film. I don't know if they were mocking or paying homage to movies like Lethal Weapon and that's precisely the problem. Bruce Willis was solid but Tracy Morgan was severely out of place. While I find Morgan funny, his act wears thin fast. Also, Kevin Smith experimenting with the hand-held shaky camera craze has to be considered a colossal failure. Maybe it wasn't even intentional but I had to look away from the screen on some simple shots because of the motion. What was he thinking? Doesn't anyone screen the final cut and let him know what was wrong?

Cop Out (2010)

1/2 (out of 4)

Jimmy (Bruce Willis) and Paul (Tracy Morgan) play NYC cops who get mixed up with Mexican gang members after Jimmy has his valuable baseball card stolen. That's really the only plot detail needed for this so-called comedy that I'm guessing is meaning to pay homage to various cop pictures of the 80s. The problem is that nothing here is remotely funny and in the end I couldn't help but wish I believed in turning movie off before finishing them. I've seen countless bad movies in my life and I actually like to seek them out but this film here is just downright embarrassing. I love Kevin Smith and his movies but this one here is just so bad that the only thing I could think is that I really hope he never makes something as bad as this again. I'm really not sure where to start but I guess I'll start with Willis and Morgan. It seems Willis knew this thing was going to be bad as I've never seen him sleepwalk through a performance like he does here. He has no energy, no life and he brings absolutely nothing to the picture. Even in his bad movies he at least brings a smile to your face but that's not the case here. I'm sure many people love Morgan but I found him to be incredibly annoying here to the point where I thought about turning the film off a couple times. I'm not sure if this is his comedy routine but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he too knew this film wasn't working and just tried anything to get a laugh. The opening sequence with him paying homage to countless other films is mildly cute but never funny. The sequence in the car where he and Seann William Scott go after one another is just downright horrid in how unfunny it is. Were they meaning to make us laugh or just annoy the hell out of us? Another big problem I had with the film is that it's so childish that you'd think a five-year-old was coming up with the material. A lot of people have accused Smith's movies of being too child like with cheap, dirty jokes but I thought his movies were always smartly written even in their toilet humor. The screenplay here, not written by Smith, shows what a really bad piece of work is. I can't help but wish that Smith had re-written the thing or perhaps written his very own cop-buddy picture. Films can be "stupid" but we at least need to believe the situation we're watching and there wasn't a single frame where I believed either of these guys as cops. They say every great director makes at least one bad film and there's no question this is it for Smith. Let's just hope things improve from this point on because they can't get much worse.

I saw this with my 15-year-old son, and we both laughed a lot, as did the nearly-full mid- afternoon theater audience. I have rarely seen such a stark disconnect between some scathing reviews and actual audience reaction.

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan have excellent chemistry. Morgan is consistently funny, and Willis goofs nicely on his own image. Sean William Scott is a hoot! You have to see his one- of-a-kind performance to believe it, and don't miss the credits!

Yes, it's no masterpiece, plot, action, or comedy-wise. The primacy of Beverly Hills Cop and Die Hard in the action-comedy pantheon is undisturbed. No new creative ground is broken here. Kevin Pollack, unfortunately, is given little to do. Adam Brody was 10 times better in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in a far smaller role. But on the whole, the movie does what one asks of an action-comedy: it makes you laugh many times, and it does not bore you.

Ana de la Reguera is also an unexpected treat. Bonita y deliciosa.

Me and my son give it two thumbs up!

After a clumsy operation trying to capture a drug dealer, the N.Y.P.D Detectives Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are suspended for one month by their Captain Romans (Sean Cullen). Jimmy decides to sell his rare baseball card to pay the expensive wedding of his daughter while his jealous partner believes that his wife is cheating him with their next-door neighbor. When Jimmy is selling his card to a memorabilia store, the place is stolen by two smalltime thieves and the detective loses his card. They track down the thieves and discover that he exchanged the card per drugs with the powerful drug lord Poh Boy (Guilermo Diaz). Jimmy and Paul seek out the gangster that proposes to trade the card per his car that had been carjacked. The detectives find the car but when they open the truck, they have a huge surprise.

"Cop Out" is a film that uses the old formula of combination of action and comedy that usually works. Kevin Smith is no longer that bold independent director from "Clerks" or "Chasing Amy" and follows the easy way of Hollywood making a conventional film, supported by the chemistry between Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. The story is entertaining and predictable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Tiras em Apuros" ("Cops in Trouble")

Cop Out casts Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as a couple of police partners with some serious issues. Willis's former wife is now married to a wealthy second husband who delights in tormenting Willis about how he can pay for the wedding of Willis's daughter out of petty cash. As for Morgan, he's insanely jealous of his wife and worried about infidelities.

Morgan's going to find out about his wife once and for all because he has installed a surveillance camera in a teddy bear in their bedroom. As for Willis, he's got a mint condition Andy Pafko 1952 Topps baseball card which was number one in the series. Should be worth more than enough to collectors to pay for the wedding.

But when they go to a memorabilia dealer these two pick a time when it's being robbed and Willis gets himself tasered. In looking for the lost Pafko the two of them get involved with a drug dealer and get into an ongoing investigation of same.

Of course it all works out in the end in a sort It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World kind of way. Sometimes the humor is rather forced, for example I'm not sure how Tracy Morgan's regularity got to be a subject for humor.

Seann William Scott has a nice role as the robber who tasers Willis, but who later joins forces with Willis and Morgan, kind of. He also has a beautiful 'resurrection' scene.

I will say someone did their research on Andy Pafko. What they say about Pafko who was a Brooklyn Dodger in 1952 is all quite true according to Wikipedia which also explains why that particular card is so prized. Cop Out will have its supporters among the fans of the lead players, but no one will ever say it's their best work.

Saw this film as the first part of a double feature with the far more anticipated Shutter Island following, so my attention was only half there. That's about all the attention I needed, though, as it's a typical buddy cop movie through and through. Not that I expected anything different, mind you.

The whole reason I and likely 90% of the audience were there was for Tracy Morgan. And it was a "classic" Tracy Morgan performance, by which I mean he's his usual off-kilter self, some of his scenes work well and some of them fall flat on their face in awkward silence.

A 50% success rate is more than I can say for Bruce Willis, though, who looked so disinterested I was half expecting him to break character at any moment and announce he had to leave the set because he had a plane to catch for another movie he was filming.

The supporting cast of the underrated Sean William Scott and Jason Lee were their usually amusing selves, while the Latino gang villains, led by Guillermo Díaz of The Shield and Weeds fame, are absurdly over the top and clichéd, almost to the point of offensiveness.

It's a movie you'll probably see on cable while nursing a hangover one morning, or something you watch on a plane because it's light and there aren't many better choices. Hard to recommend it past that.

Kevin Smith is one of my favorite modern filmmakers, but everyone makes mistakes and Smith's latest is COP OUT. I really wanted to enjoy this movie. Unfortunately, the movie was so mediocre that I found my attention wandering through most of it. The film, Smith's attempt at recreating the fun of 80's buddy cop films, stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as two disgraced cops who are suspended after a botched stake-out. The timing couldn't be worse, as Jimmy (Willis) is trying to pay for his daughter's wedding. He decides to sell off a rare baseball card to raise the funds, but a robbery relieves him of the card before he can. Jimmy and his long-time partner Paul (Morgan) set out to track down the baseball card and find themselves in the middle of a case to bring down a local drug lord who hopes to expand his business.

See, it even sounds like an 80s buddy cop movie!! The problem here is that the film isn't funny enough to be a full comedy, and the action isn't strong enough to be a decent action film. So it just sits in the middle, failing to appease people who watched it for either reason. Smith has created some of my favorite comedies (DOGMA was awesome, and JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is one of my guilty pleasures), but those were films he'd written and directed. Here, the writing duties had been given to Robb and Mark Cullen. I've never seen anything written by the Cullens and, thanks to COP OUT, I'm not in any real rush to do so. Smith's trademark borderline-juvenile comedy that usually has me laughing so hard I can't breathe is pretty much gone (though he does manage to toss in his obligatory STAR WARS reference) and replaced by cringe-worthy low(er) brow toilet humor.

The problem isn't just with the writing and weak action sequences, it's with the casting. I love Willis but he doesn't really seem to get much to work with, and for most of the movie he comes off as bored. Morgan was all right back in the day on SNL and he's pretty good on 30 ROCK, but he grinds on my nerves here. He has a few funny moments, but you need more than a few when you're helping carry an entire feature. The worst bit of casting came in the form of Guillermo Diaz as Poh Boy, the drug lord villain. Maybe it's because I can only remember him as Scarface from HALF-BAKED but I couldn't take any of his bad guy schtick seriously. Sean William Scott has the only real funny role in the movie as the S**t Bandit (so named because the cops spy him using the bathroom in the middle of a burglary). Scott earns the most laughs with his eccentric, childish games eating away at Paul's nerves.

I don't consider COP OUT a bad movie, because it's not so terribly done that I can't watch it. It has a couple fun moments but they're not enough to save the movie. The film never rises above mediocre and I hope this serves as a lesson to Smith that he should continue to write his own movies. I'm sure if he had put this together himself, it would've been light years better and we'd be applauding Smith for trying a new genre instead of wishing he hadn't.

I don't know what everyone else is on, but this movie was one of the best comedies I've seen in years. It's a HOMage to 80s buddy cop movies. But this actually improves upon them, imo. It didn't have that serious section that those did. This was wall to wall laughs. It wasn't just me. Everyone in my theater was laughing beginning to end.

The cast was sooooo perfect. He chose really funny people to fill out his cast all the way down to a pretty small role for Adam Brody who I didn't realize was hilarious until I saw him in 'Thank You for Smoking' where he was just great. I didn't like Tracy Morgan for a long time. I don't know maybe I got used to him. But he's seemed okay on "30 Rock". He's hilarious in this. But the funniest of the funny is Seann William Scott. You should see it just for his role. Susie Essman, Guillermo Diaz, the 11 year old kid, everyone really makes it work. In the beginning Willis looked a little bored, he works as often as anyone so maybe that should be expected, but eventually he got with it and then it was all smooth sailing.

I've seen some bad reviews and I don't know why. Maybe you have to be a movie fan, or Gen X or something to get all the references. And there is a doozy that references a cult favorite that I truly and loudly LOL'd at. I'm sure I missed some jokes because I was laughing at other ones. But I'll catch it when I watch this one again. And I know this movie is going to be super rewatchable. Even the songs they used were perfect. I would only not recommend this to people who have a problem with bad language. But why would they even be considering it anyway?

This was another movie I decided to watch with my movie theatre working friend. With names like Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, and director Kevin Smith attached, Cop Out sounded like a can't miss comedy. Well, this was more of a hit-or-miss flick for me with the funniest lines concerning some sexual adultery as discussed between Morgan and Sean William Scott as an annoying thief arrested by cops Bruce and Tracy. I also liked when they mentioned "Rabbit Season" "Duck Season" as part of the argument. Morgan also had some good solo moments though I thought he was too over-the-top when he quoted all those movie lines in the beginning interrogation scene. So while the story was easy to follow, the cast and writers mostly seemed to strain for laughs, I mean, how can someone like Smith veteran Jason Lee appear for a cameo and not say anything even remotely funny? So yes, he was wasted and so mostly was Rashida Jones as Tracy's wife though there was one amusing scene of when she turns the tables on her husband. So on that note, Cop Out definitely lives up to its title...

What can you expect in a Bruce Willis movie?? Action? Suspense? Thriller? Hadn't Cop Out been made you could never have said a comedy! At least I couldn't believe Bruce Willis in laugh out loud comedy! Hats off to Director Kevin Smith for handling the veteran Bruce Willis superbly! His first directorial venture in which the script has not been penned by himself!

The film also stars Tracey Morgan who with his great comic timing and hilarious sense of humor blew me away!! LOL His best part is while interrogating suspects he recites dialogues from great movies in humorous ways!Bruce Willis again shows that age doesn't affect him in selecting great roles and performing them in a superb manner!

Take my advice: you must try this movie as it will keep you tickling all the time! A must watch!

Toxic waste. As funny as hearing bad news from your doctor.

It's a retro visit to those old buddy cop films, but who is this for? Frat guys passed out on the floor from booze? Stoned nematodes? Middle schooler kids sneaking in through the exit? This is dumbed down so far, that even middle schoolers would roll their eyes.

Bruce Willis just sits around looking bored. He's got some peculiar grin on his face, like some jerk who's pulling a practical joke on a blind person. Tracy Morgan does an annoyingly cheap rip off of Murphy/Pryor/Lawrence, (take your pick). Whining, moaning, stereotyped gibberish, manic babbling delivery. He points at himself and says "look how funny." They're carting around some idiot prisoner who mumbles stupidly with childish taunts, even doing the "repeat what you said" bit. Remember that from kindergarten? It wasn't funny then, either; but at least nobody charged you ten bucks to listen to it for two hours.

Painful. Almost as bad as being seated next to Kevin Smith on a crowded airplane for a 14-hour flight. This one's a wash-out.

Kevin Smith has, up until now, always made his films the way he wants to, written them all, and even if they all haven't been great successes (actually, the last decade has been downs more than ups, though usually still decent entertainment, i.e. Zack & Miri Make a Porno), they've had his stamp. But compared to the boring stiff of a movie called Cop Out, I'd take the sappy Jersey Girl any day. Say what you will, at least that film had an underlying wit about it that was striking, and some surprises (George Carlin, really good actor!) But this time, with Cop Out, he makes a nose dive into Hollywood self-satisfaction, with stars who are equally too self-satisfied with the material they're dealing with. It's beneath them all, and no matter how much Smith might say it's parody or what-have-you, it still is undercooked, boring and just shoddy writing. That he doesn't "prove" himself as a director/editor of something he hasn't written is another matter, albeit he could have left it at Reaper.

One big problem, as I could see, was that he was perhaps too faithful to the Cullens' text. The story itself is less like a riff on the 80's buddy cop movies than it is like an unearthing of an unused screenplay from the period. The only peppering of Smith one can find in the script, ironically perhaps (though I don't know the details of filming I can speculate), are the scenes that look improvised. I would imagine, for example, that Seann William Scott, usually not the first actor that comes to mind as "brings the funny", was allowed to just go off and take-off on the text, making for an overlong but amusing one-note joke that he keeps annoying Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan's cop characters (mostly the latter with taunting about his character's wife's possible infidelity). On occasion too it would seem like Morgan is allowed to just do what he wants, though nowhere near as much as on 30 Rock.

What's missing ultimately isn't even that "Kevin Smith Touch", whatever that is. As a director, he doesn't have any sort of trademark approach, since it's really in dialog in his other films that mark it like a 'Kevin Smith movie'. If I didn't know going in that it was a Smith film, or see the name at the end, I would barely know, save for some token "homage" references that are done rampantly by Morgan. So what we're left in in Cop Out is a lot of un-funny banter between a tired-looking Willis and an idiotic and out-of-place Morgan, and a plot that involves Mexican drug kingpins treated like it's something fresh, which it isn't. And sure, there's some flatulence and s*** jokes, and sure there's some d*** jokes, and sure the little ten-year old kid whose a car thief is for all of one minute a riot. But there's no one to care about if it's being taken seriously- which, really, it wants to be as a story in the action movie genre- and it's not funny enough to care about as a comedy. It's just... weak, impersonal, a mild lump with some initial curiosity that fades within fifteen minutes.

I have to echo another reviewer who stated, "I have rarely seen such a stark disconnect between some scathing reviews and actual audience reaction." I just saw this film because I really like Tracey Morgan, Bruce Willis and SWS and figured that for a $5 matinée it would be diverting. It was far, far more-easily one of the most entertaining movies I have seen this year. A great throwback to the 80's cop buddy comedies with great characters, humor and action. I wish Kevin Smith would do more projects like this...he really proved here that he is as gifted as a director as he is as a writer/ director (Mallrats excepted of course...) and it was really cool to see his style and flourishes on a project that did not take place in his Jersey Universe.

If ever there was a flick that made me want to say, "screw the critics" this is it. Go see it and have a great time. I hope word-of-mouth builds this into a box office hit, because they left things open for a sequel and I would love to see these characters again