Review of Let's Be Cops (2014) by David P — 29 Jan 2015

Let's Be Cops starts off with a bang. It opens to Backstreet Boys' 'I want it that way,' and Jake Johnson's Ryan busting out to it in a karaoke bar. Awesome. It really sets the tone for the film, at least the first half of it.

Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. team up again, straight out of the excellent TV series 'New Girl' in Luke Greenfield's latest directorial effort. I enjoyed a lot of Greenfield's earlier work which consisted of 'The Animal' and the amazing 'The Girl Next Door.' So it was good to see him back in the fray. Jake Johnson is fantastic, pretty much still playing his character Nick from 'New Girl', but he does it so well and I love it. Wayans Jr. not so much. Although he has some good moments, I feel that he just doesn't bring the same amount of energy that Johnson does. I understand he is supposed to be the more straight character of the two but he becomes a bit of a broken record throughout the film, always being a Debbie downer, never really working his way up to this like I think his character should have. And looking so much like his Dad, I kept expecting Wayans Jr. to rock out some comedy gold, but he always feels a little restrained, possibly lacking the confidence his old man has.

So I like I said before the first half of this movie is fantastic. Once the boys find out what the can get away with and the amount of fun they can have impersonating police officers, things just keep getting funnier and funnier. I was pretty much laughing out loud for this entire section of the film. It's when Keegan-Michael Key playing a Jamaican drug trafficker named Pupa comes into it that things really start to go downhill. For one I have never really found Key to be that funny, he's been popping up in a lot of comedies of late and I just don't see it. Having him playing a Jamaican was such a stupid idea. He is so obviously not Jamaican and he just looks dumb. Just hire a Jamaican! It's the sort of gag they might pull to have a highly regarded comedian, like Will Ferrell or Jack Black, to make a cameo appearance in a fun role. But Key is not highly regarded in my book, and it doesn't work.

It's here that the stories plot kicks in with our two fake cops sticking there noses into a Russian mobsters business a little too far. The films tone drastically shifts and it becomes a bit generic at this point. I found the high I was riding from the first half barely got me through to the end, I started to get a little bored.

In short Let's Be Cops is a pretty fun movie, that has some great comedic moments, but a flawed finale. A great Saturday night flick at the movies with some mates.

3/5.

'You better get them nuts up in my guts' - JaQuandae.