Coffee & Kareem (2020)
88 min.
Release Date: April 3, 2020 (Netflix)
The punny title is innocuously clever compared to most of “Coffee & Kareem,” a mismatched buddy-cop comedy wannabe involving a Caucasian cop and an African-American pre-teen who don't quite go together like coffee and cream. This could have played as a disposable yet fun homage to the sub-genre of the late-1980s/early-‘90s, but what director Michael Dowse (2019’s fitfully amusing “Stuber”) and first-time feature writer Shane Mack have concocted is just a foul twist on the cop-and-a-kid formula—namely 1993’s “Cop and a Half”—with a barrage of dick jokes. For those expecting some crude, profane silliness to relieve real-world stress during these powerless, uncertain times, “Coffee & Kareem” is, for starters, not very funny and actually pretty off-putting and disconcerting more often than not.
Ed Helms can't help but remain in nebbish doofus mode as James Coffee, a recently demoted Detroit police officer who’s been the verbal punching bag at his precinct, especially by the emasculating Detective Linda Watts (Betty Gilpin). He’s been dating nurse Vanessa (Taraji P. Henson), who’s waiting for the appropriate time to introduce Coffee to Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh), her trash-talking 12-year-old son. When Vanessa decides to have her boyfriend pick up her son after school, Coffee stops at a friend’s house for Kareem, not knowing that Kareem is actually hiring a drug kingpin (RonReaco Lee) to take out Coffee. This is also the same drug kingpin who escaped on Coffee’s watch. Once Kareem witnesses a cop killing, this sends Coffee and Kareem—hardy har, saying that pairing gets funnier every time—into a whole wrongfully-accused plot involving dealers and crooked cops. Wackiness apparently ensues.
Shrill and strained when trying hard to offend, “Coffee & Kareem” just keeps on bombing every time gay panic, a pre-teen’s first ejaculation, and fake accusations of pedophilia become a lazy, groan-inducing go-to for comedy. Some of these instances are even made to be would-be running jokes, as well as Coffee reassuring others that his girlfriend is black to prove he isn’t a racist and Kareem schooling pushover Coffee on how to talk shit by being more “aggressive and gay.” Newcomer Terrence Little Gardenhigh is a brazen comedic force as Kareem, and he is capable of drawing a few laughs, like when the lippy punk politely asks getting-to-know-you questions to a stripper during Coffee’s respecting-women exercise in a strip joint. With material that doesn’t relentlessly hinge on him spouting vulgarities and being generally obnoxious and unctuous, Gardenhigh could even be a star, but this is decidedly not that time.
Excluding a corruption twist, there are a few surprises, like an obscure reference to Nicolas Cage-starrer “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” and Taraji P. Henson finally getting a tough mama-bear moment with a heroically great “six Tyler Perry movies”-level tirade over all the male posturing and insecurities going on around her. And then there’s Betty Gilpin (2020’s
“The Hunt”), giving the film’s broadest and most entertainingly unhinged performance, even in the strictly one-note way her role is written. Her barely contained energy and comic timing
almost make this mean-spirited mediocrity worth watching. Were it not for Gilpin, “Coffee & Kareem” would die a much quicker death than it already does as a waste of time.
Grade: C -
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