Let’s Be
Cops! Perhaps it should have been called, “Let’s Be Horribly Irresponsible and
Yet Suffer Virtually No Repercussions!” but I guess that’s not as catchy. Now
of course, this isn’t a serious attempt to make a statement on anything, let
alone the morality of impersonating a police officer, but at the very least,
the movie could have delivered on the already shaky concept. Instead, we get a
remarkably unfunny movie about two immature 30-somethings using fake badges and
uniforms to make themselves feel more than insignificant.
The movie
begins with Jake Johnson’s character singing karaoke (rather terribly) to his
buddy Justin/Damon Wayans Jr. (I recall Damon Wayans Jr.’ character name
because they repeat it 27 times throughout the film for some unknown reason)
and it really doesn’t get any better from there. For some reason the film
assumes we’ll like these two together rather than attempting to win us over at
all, although I’m not sure why. Maybe they figured since the characters say “dude”
and “man” every third sentence we’ll just all relate because that’s how all us
youngsters talk, or perhaps they thought their constant fighting/slapping would
be charming; it isn’t.
It’s a bit
of a disappointment, because it does seem that Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans
Jr. have considerable chemistry together as actors, but the bland, generic
dialogue in this film is hard to overcome. In addition, these characters aren’t
particularly likeable, especially Jake Johnson. His character is an ex-football
star from college (which I find hard to believe), who hurt his knee jumping
into a pool and never really amounted to anything after that. It’s a rather cliché
backstory, but that’s not what makes him so downright disagreeable, it’s the childish
way in which he acts throughout the film. He bullies kids on the football field
in an attempt to make himself feel manly, much in the same way he bullies
people as he impersonates an officer. This would be fine if his character ever
had any growth, but he basically doesn’t change throughout the entirety of the
film.
Damon Wayans
Jr. (or Justin, Justin! Justin, man, seriously Justin, dude, Justin. They say his name
so many times…) plays the part of the voice of reason, except his voice is
constantly being stifled. It’s impossible to know why he follows along with his
friend’s antics every time when he’s so clearly against the whole thing, but at
least his character has (really cliché) growth and he learns to stand up for
himself. His backstory, however, is even more uninteresting. He’s a video game
designer, who made this “great” cop game called patrol man, but the company changes
it to firefighters vs. Zombies against his will, because video game companies,
and that’s just totally hilarious but also sad, I guess.
The main
problem at the heart of this film, however, is the portrayal of the citizens’
reaction to cops. People are intimidated by cops if anything, but this film
acts like the badge is just an automatic chick magnet. In one scene, a whole
flock of girls run up and kiss them and jump on them, all because it’s part of
a scavenger hunt where they have to kiss an officer (I wonder if the next item
on that list was to take two bullets to the chest from a startled police
officer?) This all just seems terribly unrealistic and it squanders any attempt
at real comedy from the situation. This is a shame, because at the end just
before the credits roll there are a few clips of actually comedic scenes as the
two masquerade as police officers; one can only wonder why they didn't make it
into the actual film and instead were regulated to bonus extra gags.
Let’s Be
Cops misses a lot of opportunities at real comedy and trades them in for tired
old bits and the result is a redundant, cliché buddy (fake) cop movie. I
recently saw a very short review online that sums up this movie rather
perfectly it simply said, “Let’s Be Cops… let’s not.” Indeed, let’s not, I’d
rather be firefighters instead.
-Ryan Maples
Rating: 3.5.
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