For a movie that features an immense naked man’s crotch landing right in a character’s face and grinding away at it for way too long, Lets Be Cops is surprisingly wholesome. The real cops come out of it pretty well, the fake ones learn important lessons about who they really are and what they should be trying to do, and truth’n’justice prevail, for Hollywood values of truth’n’justice.
Your typical comedy with amiable schmucks getting out of their depth with vicious criminals usually ends with the amiable schmucks somehow discovering their inner badasses and clobbering everything around them. I liked it that Justin and Ryan NEVER got any good at the hard parts of being a cop. There’s a big shoot out at the end of it, and they spend their time cowering and panicking while an actual policeman sorts out the problem. And he’s not some kind of super cop; he’s just a decent guy with training and sense of purpose. And the panic isn’t played for laughs - much. Justin and Ryan are believably out of their depth, and it’s more menacing than funny.
It’s not outrageously funny - the only joke I can actually remember now is from the credits; embedded there in the cast list is "Insanely Handsome Police Tech - Luke Greenfield”. Which is one of the smarter things I’ve ever seen a writer-director do with a cameo. But it’s got a lot of heart and a likeable cast, and while it’s on you’re coasting along with it. I’ve seen worse, though in a strange way I get more out of worse movies because I can rag on them afterwards.
Weirdest thing in the movie is seeing Andy Garcia as a crooked cop. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Garcia in anything, and even longer since I saw him play a bad guy. The whole time he’s on screen, he can’t help making everyone else look like a stand-up comedian; it’s like he’s slipped in from another movie. Give this man more work.
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