HOMAGE TO CATATONIA : Kevin Smith’s ‘Cop Out’ [3/10]

To paraphrase Norma Desmond, Kevin Smith is big – it’s his pictures that got small. Never exactly svelte, Smith was recently described as “gargantuan” in a review of Noel Clarke’s 4.3.2.1 (in which he cameos) and earlier this year made headlines after being kicked off an aeroplane because of a spat relating to his excessive avoirdupois. In contrast, his latest movie Cop Out – the first time he’s directed a movie that he hasn’t also written – has largely sneaked in and out of cinemas in startlingly unobtrusive fashion. When was the last time a Bruce Willis vehicle made so little splash?
   Presumably arising from Smith and Willis’s moderately amusing sharing of screen time in Die Hard 4, Cop Out is a baffling misfire of a supposed comedy in which Willis and 30 Rock‘s Tracy Morgan are bickering, bungling New York cops who’ve been partners for nine years. Temporarily suspended after their latest blunder, the pair carry on pretty much as (ab-)normal, in clunky escapades relating to the theft of a valuable baseball card which Willis was planning to sell in order to pay for his daughter’s fancy wedding.
   A series of largely uninspired sketches strung together by scriptwriters Mark and Robb Cullen around the baggiest of plots, Cop Out rather opportunistically presents itself as an “homage” to buddy/police pictures of the 1980s and 90s such as Lethal Weapon: the dialogue in the opening stretches is all about the idea of movie homages, and there’s a synth-heavy retro score by Beverly Hills Cop‘s composer Harold Faltermeyer, returning to Hollywood for the first time since 1994’s Kuffs. But even as a loving pastiche of / tribute to Smith’s favourite genre pictures, Cop Out falls repeatedly flat – a little of Morgan’s mugging going an extremely long way, and Willis little more than a bemused, befuddled-looking bystander. 
   Given the leads’ deficiencies, one would expect the supporting cast to steal the show – but contributions here are similarly undistinguished, with two notable exceptions. Susie Essman turns in a classic attention-grabbing, energy-level-raising turn as a pistol-packing housewife experiencing a home-invasion, both character and performer taking control of the situation through sheer force of personality.
   As the hapless home-invader – a goofball, ingratiating weirdo of a thief who deploys nifty parkour moves while on the job – Seann William Scott provides further evidence that, more than a decade after American Pie, he remains a key asset of US mainstream comedy cinema. His priceless line-readings and reactions are, as always, capable of elevating even the most mundane of enterprises – and once again he’s a rare ray of comic sunshine amid an otherwise largely mirthless murk. 
   He has a little more to do than in his previous collaboration with Smith (a rare, unfunny dud of a bit-part in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back) but it’s typical of the director’s slapdash attitude to his material here that he squanders his major trump-card in such a small handful of scenes. It’s hard to imagine the once-fresh talent behind the likes of Clerks and Mallrats displaying such lazy profligacy. Sic transit gloria tubbius-bitchus, as Jason Mewes might have put it.

Neil Young
31st May, 2010

COP OUT : [3/10]
USA 2010 : Kevin SMITH : 107m (BBFC) : {8/28}
seen 26th May 2010 at Konsertpaleet cinema, Bergen (NOK 95 = £10 approx.) with thanks to Nils V. Gjerstad