“Front Row Seat Movie Review” “Cop Out”
I give this movie “Three Barbeque Bones”. I have to give this movie a mix review. For the young people that are used to seeing movies full of cursing but funny and entertaining you will like this movie. For anyone thinking about going in to the ministry this movie will send you directly to hell: do not pass go and do not collect $200 dollars. [Smile!] I am not going into the ministry, but I recommend caution because of all the cursing especially the language used by the 11 year old boy. But this movie crosses all racial lines. As I was leaving the movie an elderly white man said to me, “How did you like the Bruce Wills [playing Jimmy Monroe] movie?” I said “The Tracy Morgan [playing Paul Hodges] movie was good.” The performers in this movie will draw a mixed audience, Black, White, Hispanic, young and old alike. Tracy Morgan was very funny but showed a serious side at the end. “Cop Out” turned out to be “Beverly Hills Cop’s” look alike even down to the music. There is a good story line, lots of action, thrills and not predictable. If you go see this movie and can get pass the cursing, even in the subtitles, you will have a good time!
The name of my movie review is “Front Row Seat Movie Review”.
Clarification of my rating levels are as follows:
My rating system starts with the lowest level of:
¤ One Chicken Bone: Lowest level “pretty bad!”
If a movie receives this rating you should avoid it during your lifetime! ‘You shouldn’t even see a “bootleg” copy of this movie!
¤ Poor: One Barbeque Bone
¤ Fair: Two Barbeque Bones
¤ OK: Three Barbeque Bones
¤ Good: Four Barbeque Bones
¤ Excellent: Five Barbeque Bones
¤ Outstanding: In additional upper level rating of “Five Barbeque Bones with Barbeque Sauce”. If a movie receives this rating, you need to stop whatever you are doing and go to see it now!
Jimmy Sr.
Copyright © 2009 Front Row Seat Movie Review
Starring: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Kevin Pollack, Jason Lee, Rashida Jones
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Produced by: Polly Cohen Johnsen, Marc Platt, Michael Tadross
Written by: Mark Cullen, Rob Cullen
Distributor: Warner Bros
Cop Out is rated R and runs 107 minutes.
Review in a Hurry: Too-fat-to-fly director Kevin Smith steps outside his normal comfort zone with a tribute to the cop-buddy comedies of the ’80s, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. While Smith’s self-acknowledged weakness with action sequences is still evident, his gift for profanity-laden comedy more than makes up for it.
The Bigger Picture: Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Cop Out is a tribute to cop-buddy comedy sequels of the ’80s, since, when the movie opens, our bickering partners have been together nine years, and there’s no obligatory recap of how they first met, hated each other initially, and later turned out to be the perfect mismatch. This does lead one to wonder how a screeching, paranoid dork like Paul Hodges (Morgan) ever became a detective, let alone one paired with the more standard action-hero-y Jimmy Monroe (Willis), but skipping the origin story at least allows us to cut directly to the chase (literally).
While Willis and Morgan’s characters are a homage to such duos as Lethal Weapon’s Murtaugh and Riggs, they are paralleled by a duo—played by Adam Brody and Kevin Pollak—who exist as all-out spoof, depicted as painfully modern metrosexuals who only wish they could be true movie heroes.
Meanwhile, the McGuffin of the movie—a stolen baseball card with which Willis’ Monroe hopes to pay for his daughter’s wedding—allows Smith to briefly indulge his love of collectibles.
Smith gets nearly everything right, from a soundtrack that features mostly ’80s rock and rap hits plus a retro-cool synth score by Beverly Hills Cop’s Harold Faltermeyer, to the delicate balance of laugh-out-loud dialogue (playing an inept burglar, Seann William Scott actually manages to bring down the house with a knock-knock joke) with real danger (people die, often violently).
But those action-comedies of yesteryear also had great action set-pieces, and this really doesn’t:
Smith, as usual, does his own editing, which may be a mistake in a genre that’s so different than he’s used to, and so dependent on timing. He also frequently composes shots with the actors dead center of screen, a major film-school no-no because it generally registers as less dynamic to the viewer.
With that said, you’re not going to go see this movie for any particularly artistic reason. The humor is the draw, it works very well, and since almost none of the dialogue is reprintable here, you’ll need to discover it for yourself. And it must be said that Willis knows how to pull off an in-joke far better than his former Pulp Fiction costar John Travolta did in From Paris With Love.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Aside from an amusing Jason Lee cameo, fans hoping for more of the Clerks/View Askew version of Kevin Smith may not find what they were hoping for.
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/movie_reviews/ b168967_review_cop_out_dirty_funny_spoofy_buddy.html
