Sunday, August 10, 2014

Let's Be Cops

We'll get to the movie I'm supposed to be reviewing, but I need to backtrack and talk about movies I probably should have reviewed.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - As awesome as you've heard!

Lucy - An action movie that that takes a left turn into 2001: Space Odyssey territory. Honestly, it was kind of awesome.

Guardians of the Galaxy - As awesome as you've heard. Also, just like all of the other Marvel movies, stay through the credits!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - To Be Continued(Haven't seen it yet)

Alright, let's talk about this piece of shit!


To be fair, I guess it's not too bad. There were parts where I laughed and there was one part where it was pretty hilarious, but, throughout most of the run time, it's not even all that funny and it weirdly doesn't even try to be throughout some long stretches. The entire premise sounds like it should be giving this movie a lot more mileage than it actually gets. Two guys decide to dress up as cops, but, after getting mistaken for actual cops and getting some unexpected benefits out of it, they decide to actually pretend to be cops. I've heard of worse ideas that have turned out well, but I guess bringing up Lord and Miller would be cheating. Anyways, here's a question that the filmmakers didn't seem to ask.

"Since when the hell does being a cop make you the life of the party?"

Seriously! You kind of have to wonder why being a cop suddenly made these guys the cool kids when virtually everyone I know seems to have a big distrust with the cops because they totally got pulled over for no reason that one time. Things that did happen that actually worked a little better was when the main characters got confused for being male-strippers and another time when they got involved in actual police work where everything just fell apart for them. But, other than that, It kind of feels like that the people behind Let's Be Cops forgot that they were making a movie about two guys pretending to be cops. Either that, or they had a serious crime drama under works and some joker decided that it would be a fun twist if they threw in guys who weren't really cops.



Anyways, the story of this movie involves two, down on their luck guys who aren't really getting anywhere in life. One guy is named Ryan and he got a sum of money that he's been living off of after doing a herpes treatment commercial. The other is Justin, who works for a game place...thingy(it's kind of hard to tell what kind of place this is) and is trying to pitch a video game idea, but nobody is willing to listen to him. Also, he's black and is the somewhat useless, comic relief side-kick because this is a comedy...I think. One night, they're invited to a masquerade party but Ryan confuses it for a costume party and they decide to dress as cops. After some embarrassment of being guys who are sort of stuck in their own life, they leave the party feeling down until they get mistaken for real cops and start getting treated like...awesome people, for some reason.

The thing behind this movie is that it's completely interchangeable with damn near any other low-end, formulaic comedy. To be fair, it does a decent job of following the guidelines for a decent script, but the end result clashes against the idea of this movie being a comedy or even a movie about guys pretending to be cops. In fact, the entire idea that these guys are pretending to be cops is inconsequential for the entire movie. Most of the jokes don't even require them pretending to be cops and a lot of the jokes don't even make sense, ESPECIALLY within the context of its own film. I mean, yeah, I guess it's funny that they held up some guys for a search and seizure and, while that whole thing is happening, Justin starts making the guys dance while he's holding everyone at gunpoint. You'd think the guys getting held up would have at least said something, but they're being held at gunpoint and, to be fair, it's probably not the strangest thing a cop has asked them to do. So, I guess I'll let that one slide.


Oh yeah, and since they were using the most generic screenplay possible, they have to put conflict into the movie somehow. So, the main characters have run ins with a gang of drug dealers. This is the part where the movie gets weird and is the main cause of why the movie has long stretches of it not being funny. As in, they suddenly want you to care about what's going on with actual stakes and drama after the movie had us try to laugh at all of the "cccrraaazzzzyyyyy" situations these guys got into. Seriously, why would a movie have us laugh at how these guys shouldn't be cops and then suddenly make us think that they should be cops after they were failing so badly at it?

There's one action beat in the movie that has the movie shift tone and it puts the characters in real danger. It's honestly a well done scene, but it's at this point I was kind of thinking "Wasn't this supposed to be a comedy?" After this well done scene, the movie throws away any promise it has at having chops for a decent action movie by giving us a bad action movie at the end of it all. There are cases where the movie still tries to be funny involving jokes where...umm, I guess where there scenes that come off as them accidentally doing gay things to each other? Honestly, it's kind of hard to explain, but the movie doesn't bother to even try to make sense out of the situation, so it really doesn't matter.


I honestly felt like this had potential to be a really funny movie. But the whole thing feels like a result of the filmmakers not really knowing what to do with their own premise. It's not really even a gimmick, it's just feels more like the two main characters just happen to be mistaken for cops. Other than that, it's a below average comedy that just runs into a brick wall by the end of it all. I think the movie even indulged in some racist and sexist humor, but the movie was so boring that I doubt anybody would care enough to get angry. And that alone shows just how empty this movie is.

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