Sometimes you get creative, funny and exciting cop-action comedies like the recent Jump Street films, “The Heat,” or “Hot Fuzz”. And sometimes you get “Let’s Be Cops,” a film destined to play bi-weekly on FX’s afternoon circuit.
Fox has carpet bombed “Let’s Be Cops” for almost a year now. They’re constantly dropping TV ads, premiere posters and incessant ‘swag’ at seemingly every opportunity. I was unfortunate enough to catch a prescreening in San Diego during peak comic-con hours on the premise of seeing Damon Wayans Jr., Jake Johnson, Keegan-Michael Key, Rob Riggle, Nina Dobrev and Natasha Leggro. Jake Johnson “couldn’t make it,” but the others did manage to show their faces and be pleasant for a few minutes before the screening.
Anyways, if you haven’t seen Fox’s marketing for the film, it stars Jake Johnson (“New Girl”) and Damon Wayans Jr. (“The Other Guys” and “My Wife and Kids”) and focuses on their mistaken fortune of being misidentified as cops. The two decide to take this happy accident as a golden opportunity to pal around LA and cause mischief in their makeshift cruiser. The perceived subtext of the film, however, ends up being about two losers in their 30s that have a need to feel powerful, and seemingly the quickest ticket in LA is to become a cop.
Don’t get me wrong, the premise could’ve easily struck gold. “Let’s Be Cops” had plenty of opportunities to take the audience through any number of humorous misadventures. The film had some prime ingredients: a great cast, a pliable outline and even a gracious production budget. Instead, Luke Greenfield decides to have Wayans Jr. and Johnson bicker constantly and belittle every woman on screen.
Like many slipshod* comedies, this film drags on with at least ten different scenarios that could’ve easily been solved by the average human being. If Johnson or Wayans Jr. were meant to be mentally incapable in any way, their actions (especially Johnson’s) might’ve had some leverage. However, “Let’s Be Cops” cannot seem to decide the boundaries it wants to take on its characters. Any ‘smart’ decision made by Wayans Jr. or Johnson is almost immediately negated due to a very, very poor and seemingly incomprehensibly stupid decision made directly afterwards.
Almost as annoying is the blatant sexism in the film. Nina Dobrev (Wayans Jr.’s love interest) does absolutely nothing in the movie. The only addendum she makes (besides folding into the overused girlfriend/supporting role) is aiding the boys in the film’s second act by using her makeup skills to “disguise” Wayans Jr. The get-up ends up being just another hack job at the expense of trite, overused stereotyping. “Let’s Be Cops” is, at its best, an entourage of tasteless jokes that would’ve been considered stale in the early 2000s.
“Let’s Be Cops” inability to follow its own comic logic or find one creative way to spend its runtime is its biggest killer. Not one character in the film feels fresh or interesting. Luke Greenfield doesn’t even use Rob Riggle to good effect. In fact, Rob Riggle is one of the most uninteresting characters in the piece. Riggle improvs a few lines when his character is first introduced in the film, and then nothing. The only minor spark that flew up in “Let’s Be Cops” was Keegan Michael-Key’s thug character, but that is mostly due to Key’s uncanny ability to take a cliché and flip it.
While the overall jokes were hit and miss (with way more miss than hit), Key’s batting average was still far better than Johnson or Wayans. Generally the duo can be funny, but the writing is so dim and the gags are so frustratingly predictable that sitting through the whole thing felt like a waste of time for the cast and the audience.
Via: 7bitarcade
There are plenty of great movies this summer at the box office. “Let’s be Cops” is not one of them. With the $9-$13 you might have spent on a ticket to this movie, you could instead buy a month of Netflix and revel in their fantastic selection of titles, comedy and otherwise (if you are looking for some fantastic recommendations I suggest clicking here.)
Let’s let “Let’s Be Cops” die quietly, with what dignity remains.
