{"id":5029,"date":"2010-02-26T15:16:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T19:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5029"},"modified":"2010-02-26T15:16:04","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T19:16:04","slug":"he-never-meta-film-reference-he-didnt-like-a-review-of-cop-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5029","title":{"rendered":"He Never Meta Film Reference He Didn’t Like: A Review of Cop Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The late, great film critic Pauline Kael wrote that \u201can homage is a plagiarism that your lawyer tells you is not actionable.\u201d Where do you draw that line though? When does gentle chiding and affection turn into parody? Certainly a film like last year\u2019s B<\/span>lack Dynamite<\/span><\/a><\/em> made that difficult to determine; because, while it tried hard to replicate blaxploitation to the point where it would be indistinguishable from an actual film from 1973, it also made self-aware references to the fact that what it was doing was inherently ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Kevin Smith\u2019s Cop Out<\/em> is much too lazy to even approach parody or satire. It\u2019s basically a straight-ahead, modern version of Beverly Hills Cop<\/em>, 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon 2<\/em>, or any other \u201cracially diverse\u201d cop-buddy movie from the 1980s that featured a mouthy cop and his begrudgingly accommodating partner. That the clich\u00e9s of cop movies, the angry captain who orders the reckless team to give him their badges and guns, the desperate need for the cop with strong family ties to attend his \u201cperfect\u201d daughter\u2019s wedding\/recital, the wacky car chases, etc, were mercilessly parodied to death by 1993 (Last Action Hero<\/em>, Loaded Weapon 1<\/em>) may have given Smith the idea that enough time had passed where old and tired could become new and fresh again.<\/p>\n

\"\"The thing is, Smith could potentially be right. But Cop Out <\/em>is so half-baked and thrown together in the editing room that it can\u2019t even meet the meager expectations given to us by its dire trailer. Smith tries to excuse all of the laziness up front by having the first scene explain an homage and have \u201cout of control\u201d cop Tracy Morgan make references to various popular films of the last 30 years during the interrogation of a suspect. Not a promising start — relying on other films to do the work for you. But what makes it worse than even Smith\u2019s own 2 hour fitfully funny in-joke Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back<\/em>, is that Smith apparently didn\u2019t trust the audience to get the references. And so he actually has Bruce Willis, playing Tracy Morgan\u2019s perpetually eye-rolling partner, tell us where each bit of cribbed dialogue comes from (except for the obnoxious From Paris With<\/span> Lo<\/span>ve<\/span><\/a><\/span> –<\/em>like Die Hard <\/em>reference).<\/p>\n

The rest of Cop Out, <\/em>like its generic title, plays like one of Steven Seagal\u2019s recent DTV offerings; where the plot doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense and exposition is handled in voiceover, suggesting that the movie was never really finished — just that the accountants told them to stop shooting. This theory is backed up by how much improvising was clearly required of the actors. That\u2019s fine in small spurts for Tracy Morgan (which is why he is funny on 30 Rock<\/em>), but disastrous for Bruce Willis, as evidenced by his work in The Whole Ten Yards<\/em> and Hudson Hawk<\/em>, or whenever you see Willis promoting his films on a talk show. This was especially obvious when he was trying to rally behind The Whole Ten Yards<\/em> during a Letterman appearance and you could see how hard he was trying to be funny and goofy, instead of relaxing and letting the humor arrive naturally.<\/p>\n

\"\"Throughout Cop Out<\/em> you can see Morgan, Willis, and Seann William Scott (as a petty thief) trying <\/em>to be funny through outbursts of childish behavior. There\u2019s no consistency of tone and there\u2019s no inkling that the actors understood that the best way to play comedy is to play it straight.<\/p>\n

It is<\/em> possible to justify Cop Out<\/em> as a \u201cloving retread.\u201d But that\u2019s really just an excuse. Yes, we notice the use of the Harold Faltermeyer score (Beverly Hills<\/em> Cop,<\/em> Fletch, Top Gun<\/em>), courtesy of his Casio. But that\u2019s just a reminder that Smith has been trying to get his own Fletch<\/em> film made with Jason Lee for years, and it looks like he settled for Cop Out <\/em>instead.<\/p>\n

\"\"Is Cop Out<\/em> deliberately bad, with its phony looking dummies flying out of car windshields, visually ungainly photography, strangely graphic violence at odds with the tone of the rest of the film, sloppy editing, and glacial pacing? If a movie is this dull and unprofessional — to the point where you\u2019re either cringing or have the constant urge to leave — does it really matter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The late, great film critic Pauline Kael wrote that \u201can homage is a plagiarism that your lawyer tells you is not actionable.\u201d Where do you draw that line though? When does gentle chiding and affection turn into parody? Certainly a film like last year\u2019s Black Dynamite made that difficult to determine; because, while it tried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[1517,6223,6221,5188,247,2723,5798,5704,956,1845,233,634,153,3152,6226,786,527,2682,739,1712,6230,2104,6193,6227,6224,2683,1086,4854,287,2385,710,624,577,4442,6225,636,1804,909,3287,6229,4600,2377,6231,1206,108,6232,310,5189,2427,980,1847,262,272,192,528,6228,6222,1506,1376,6220,157,1558],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}