On paper, it sounded like a trainwreck: A buddy cop movie starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan that is directed (but not written) by the always mediocre Kevin Smith. So why did I rent it (via Netflix)? I dunno. I thought maybe it would be funny. I like Bruce Willis and I like Tracy Morgan. I mean, I've liked them in other things. The best I could say is that I tolerated them in this. But they did their best.
Here's the plot: Bruce Willis is a cop who can't afford his daughter's lavish, $48,000 wedding, so he is forced to sell his prized possession: A 1953 Andy Pafko baseball card. It gets stolen before he can sell it, so he and his partner, Tracy Morgan, have to track it down in order to pay for his daughter's wedding and take down a Mexian druglord in the process. Got all that? Good, cause we are now going to talk about how stupid that is.
Who cares is Willis can afford the ridiculously expensive wedding for his selfish daughter? After watching scene after scene where he risks his life to find his baseball card -- even getting in league with the villain in order to do so -- we don't care at all about his mission. We just hate his daughter for being such a selfish bitch. Also, her wedding isn't even in jeopardy, because his ex-wife's new husband is willing to pay for the wedding anyway. Willis is only putting his life and his partner's life in needless danger simply because he doesn't want somebody else to pay for a wedding that costs too much anyway. Why didn't they just agree to split it? Or, better yet, don't have such a stupid plot that makes it impossible to care about what's going on.
Or, at least, make sure what is going on is entertaining. Unfortunately, this movie was just as boring and unengaged as it was annoying and infuriating. It wasn't unwatchable, and there were even a few scenes that made me laugh. Afterall, when you have a film with Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, and Seann William Scott, it's going to have some laughs. These three can't not be funny, so when the film has a scene where it's just the three of them sitting in a car, it's funny. But Kevin Smith's horrible direction almost ruined even such a simple set up as three guys in a car.
This movie just sucked.
5 comments:
That plot is making me mad just thinking about it. What kind of daughter would design a $48,000 wedding when she knows that her dad is drawing a meager cop's salary?
Exactly! I'm glad to know it wasn't just me who found that annoying.
Also, the daughter was played by Michelle Trachtenberg (sp?), so it's like they wanted her to be as unlikable and annoying as possible.
The weird thing is that for some reason, I had a completely different idea of what this movie was supposed to be about. I don't know where I got this idea from, but I thought Tracy Morgan's character was an actor or something trying to learn how to be a cop from Bruce Willis.
Is that the plot to another movie? Because that sounds like a better story.
The Hard Way! That's the movie I should have remembered. Except I've never seen it, so I didn't remember it.
Why didn't they just remake that with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan?
The Hard Way. Heh. I've still never actually seen that movie, but I should. James Woods and Michael J. Fox? How could that be bad?
I did see Showtime, however, which was that movie starring Eddie Murphy and Robert DeNiro as cops who get picked to be on some reality show or something. That was awful, but better than Cop Out.
But I don't blame you for being confused by the premise, cause I was too. It took me about thirty minutes in before I realized that, yes, Tracy Morgan's character was actually a real cop who was Bruce Willis's characters partner. It took me that long because Tracy Morgan played it the same way he plays every role: Like a person who's either on drugs or retarded. It's a funny character, but still all wrong for a role in a cop film that is otherwise played as a normal movie.
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