Review of Let's Be Cops (2014) by Spencer H — 07 Oct 2014

At the very least, this should have been fun but still very stupid, which is completely fine; I've given stellar ratings to silly concepts as long as they had me rolling in my seat. But "Let's Be Cops" is more than just a bad script; it's bad direction, acting, focus and also just a bad movie. I really wanted to love this too, I tried to get my friends to see it relentlessly but they just wouldn't budge, so when the time finally came for me to see it, I couldn't have been more excited to laugh my ass off.

This movie came out right around the time I was realizing that "New Girl" is not actually a show for girls and actually that much of the humor plays towards a male audience. After really getting into it, I was excited to see Jake Johnson in a raunchy comedy where he was the lead, because often times he uses movie roles to show off his more subtle comedic abilities or to show straight-up dramatic chops. On "New Girl" he gets to be crazy and weird and I hope he doesn't mind me saying this, but that is what he is absolutely best at; he's good at the other stuff too but he does best as a big comedic character. And we know he has great chemistry with his "New Girl" co-star, Damon Wayans Jr., who also does his best work as a crazy comedic character, so as long as those two have fun on "Let's Be Cops," it will at least rub off on the audience enough to enjoy the movie, right? Wrong.

Most scenes feel like everyone just woke up from a nap. The movie's energy level is very low, which is contrary to everything you see in the trailer. The actors are tied to down to an abysmal script and really could have benefitted if they were allowed to each embrace their improve comedy roots, but it really feels wooden, like everything had to be delivered exactly as it was written on the page. Johnson gets to play the whacky character and Wayans sticks to playing the straight-man who still gets moments of broad humor but not nearly as much.

We understand the premise of the story very early on: two dudes pretend to be cops because their real lives are so boring. The issue is that Wayans' character comes on too strong and too soon as the straight-man and every ten minutes we get a confrontation between the two leads about whether or not they should be doing this; we know they're going to keep doing it so please stop bringing whatever energy the movie had to a screeching halt every ten minutes. I have no problem with the overly predictable cookie-cutter plot that goes in every direction you would guess, as long as plenty of laughs are provided along the way, but unfortunately only a few are provided.

Rob Riggle wasn't even able to save this one, and you can always bank on a little Riggle to give your sluggish movie a much-needed boost, but here they also have him playing a straight-man, and he's unable to deliver us the goods. All we need in this movie are scenes where the two leads get to banter off of one another and get along during scenes. We can't enjoy the movie when the two people whom we want to be friends are always bickering in a relatively serious manner.

I was worried this movie would turn Johnson off of doing big, broad comedies like this but thankfully it made boatloads of cash, so hopefully he'll continue to make them but next time with a better script and director. It's just too bad that this wasn't better; it really is a wasted opportunity; we know these two actors can be hilarious together and I doubt the chances that they'll have the opportunity to make a movie like this again together.