"Cop Out" lame and lamer

Cop Out (2010)
107 min., rated PG-13
Grade: D +

Cop Out looks like every interracial buddy-cop movie ever made, Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, and in the early going feels like a spoof of them.

Even an early scene with Paul (Tracy Morgan) as the motor-mouth NYPD partner to Jimmy (Bruce Willis) making a “homage” to Heat, Training Day, Die Hard (hah, guess who was in that one?), and etc. feels like a Kevin Smith movie.

Too bad he didn't actually write or doctor the script. That would be the work of writers Marc and Robb Cullen, while Smith gets his first for-hire studio gig as director and editor.

Paul and Jimmy get suspended by the captain (oh, we've never seen that before), but that's okay because they still chase down Latino gangsters and go searching for a valuable baseball card of Jimbo's so he can sell it to pay for his daughter's big wedding. Somehow a missing Mercedes and a beautiful Spanish chica get thrown in as well, and Paul thinks his wife (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him.

Seann William Scott has the excruciating Joe Pesci sidekick role as a drug-addicted burglar who repeats everything the dicks say.

Morgan and Willis should seal the deal, sounding like great comic foils on paper and looking it on the poster. But Morgan never stops yelling or comes up for air and Willis looks bored throughout this overlong blooper reel, which also criminally wastes a good cast.

Cop Out might've worked as a foulmouthed parody of its genre had Smith written it, but he has no business directing this obnoxious and unfunny timewaster. Harold Faltermeyer's annoying Beverly Hills Copish synthesizer score is the cherry on top.

As the controversial original title “A Couple of Dicks” and Smith's name almost made Cop Out sound promising, all we have here is a cop-out of a movie.