One-time indie icon Kevin Smith’s first film as a major studio hack-for-hire, the shambling ’80s mis matched cops homage “Cop Out,” repeatedly shoots for laughs — but ends up mostly firing blanks.
Not only do stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan have zero comic chemistry together, there are long stretches when it seems as if both of them would rather be home cashing residual checks than frantically mugging their way through this labored action farce.
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It’s a sign of the film’s general cluelessness — and an especially dopey script attributed to brothers Robb and Mark Cullen — that we’re told it’s an “homage” when Morgan interpolates a series of impressions based on ’80s cop movies into the interrogation of a suspect.
If you have to explain the joke — twice! — it probably wasn’t funny in the first place.
Willis and Morgan (“30 Rock”) wearily play Jimmy and Paul, longtime partners in the NYPD, who are suspended after their bungling results in a shooting death during a Brooklyn stakeout.
They’re quickly back in action, though, after a drug-addled crook (Seann William Scott) steals a rare baseball card that Jimmy was planning to sell to pay for his daughter’s wedding.
Their wholly unauthorized pursuit leads them to the Rockaways and a memorabilia-obsessed Mexican drug dealer (Guillermo Diaz).
The bad guy wants our heroes to track down his car — in the trunk of which he’s stashed the mistress (Ana de la Reguera) of a rival drug dealer. Exciting stuff.
Meanwhile, Paul is weepily worried that his wife is sleeping with a neighbor while he’s out all night with Jimmy. And Jimmy is jealous of his ex-wife’s smarmy new husband (Smith regular Jason Lee).
“Cop Out” offers a lot of talk — only very occasionally funny — and not much action. What action there is, is staged and shot perfunctorily at best.
Willis basically smirks his way through the proceedings, while the gifted Morgan often seems miserable as the butt of most of the film’s gags.
Aside from the emphasis on his scatological humor and letting overly improvised scenes drone on way too long, Smith’s direction is utterly impersonal.
An obsessive about genre flicks, Smith may well have something humorous to say about “48 Hrs.,” “Beverly Hills Cop” or “Running Scared.”
But you sure can’t tell it from the all too aptly named “Cop Out.”