Let's Be Cops - Movie Review

                

            Buddy cop comedy/action films have become a type of genre in cinema over the last 5 or so years. Buddy cop movies generally have a bad reputation because many aren’t good movies. There are some surprises here and there, like The Other Guys (2010), 21 Jump Street (2012), and 22 Jump Street (2014). While this film is not exactly the same as the other buddy cop movies, coming out of the movie, I realized it is a buddy cop movie. Going in I thought it was just a comedy. With many recent comedies being very bad, I hoped it would be good, but was afraid it might be bad…

            Jake Johnson plays a man who was an incredible football player in college, but couldn’t go in because of an injury. He now does… nothing. Damon Wayans Jr. plays a video game designer who’s having a tough time. These guys are very good friends, and when they get a lot of attention from people after going to a party in which they were dressed as cops, they decide to impersonate cops for a while to be able to handle situations in their own way and have fun.

            From that, you can probably tell that this is a very clichéd and formulaic movie, and you are absolutely right. Although we haven’t really seen a premise like this before, the characters are clichéd, and just about every beat of the plot is. It was very predictable, and it went in directions that many films like this go in.

            From a comedy standpoint, this film isn’t that bad. There is some clever comedy in this movie. And while most of the other humor is absurd, it’s delivered so well by the actors that it turns out to be funny. But I’m not saying all the comedy in this movie is funny. Only about half of it was. There were some incredibly unfunny moments and many jokes that miss. A lot of the comedy that missed in the movie was not original comedy. It’s not word-for-word coping off another comedy, but it uses types of comedy techniques that other films have used. There is also some very vulgar and raunchy comedy that went too far into jokes that weren’t funny from the beginning. Slapstick has found its place in this movie, too. However, it’s not used all the time. But the uses of are still not good. Some of the comedy was good, some was not.

            This is not an awful movie. There were times in it when I realized I was having a moderate amount of fun watching it. I was definitely not bored by the film, and the execution wasn’t horrible. I’m saying that if you go into this movie and turn off your brain, it’d probably be a moderately fun time, although there are some things that would probably bug you.

            The film asks the audience to suspend disbelief on incredibly ridiculous and absurd things. It didn’t matter if I had my brain off, I would not be able to stand some of the things that happened in the movie, as I couldn’t while watching the film with my brain on. There are many events that were so stupid and ridiculous that I could not take my mind off the absurdity of what was happening. And there are many other things that are smaller than some of crazy ones, but they still don’t go looked over. Mostly because at one point a character was talking about how unrealistic gun violence is in movies and video games while an action scene is going on with another character, and it is just as unrealistic as what the character is saying is unrealistic about gun action in movies and video games.

            This film mixes comedy and serious action… not very well. There are many sudden tone shifts that cause many inconsistencies in the tone of the film. The action side of it is supposed to be dark and serious and realistic, while the comedy side is so absurd that it takes away from the seriousness, darkness, and realism of the action side of the plot. And some of the characters having to do with the action side of the plot were just there so there would be a villain, so we could have something that could be used as a conflict. The film attempts many things it can’t accomplish. When the action is supposed to be enthralling, I didn’t care about the characters. I will say that the direction is ambitious, but it’s so unrealistic and ridiculous that it’s not intense. It’s not engaging. There are also twists in the film, and I predicted them all.

            While Let’s Be Cops has its laughs, it has its unfunny moments. Although I did have some fun with it, it’s ridden with clichés, immensely unrealistic, and thoroughly predictable. While it’s not quite a bad movie, it’s definitely not a good one either.