Bill Wine - Celebrity News Service Movie Critic
110 minutes
In theaters February 26, 2010
Rating: R, Action comedy
It's an odd odd-couple pairing of a coupla cops.

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, the heroic big-screen lead and the irreverent small-screen cutup, co-star in Cop Out, a halfhearted parody of 1980s buddy action flicks, as NYPD policemen, with Willis bouncing his sturdy presence and signature facial expression off breakout-star Morgan's goofy exuberance.

Think of it as The Smirk and The Jerk.

Now if only director Kevin Smith could have drummed up a plot that wasn't such a throwaway to go with his wiseacre dialogue and his principals' improv-heavy acting style.

Willis plays Jimmy Monroe, a veteran Big Apple detective whose rare baseball card -- a 1952 Andy Pafko, in mint condition and thus extremely valuable -- is stolen.

He desperately needs the pilfered card back so he can sell it to pay for his daughter's upcoming wedding, to fend off an attempt by his ex-wife's moneyed boyfriend (Jason Lee) to pay for the pricy nuptials, thus humiliating him.

Things go from bad to worse when Monroe and his partner of nine years, Paul Hodges, played by Morgan, are suspended. Disregarding protocol, Monroe recruits Hodges to help him catch up with the thief, a memorabilia-obsessed gangster (Cory Fernandez), an undertaking that might at least distract Hodges from his around-the-clock obsession with discovering proof of the alleged infidelity of his wife (Rashida Jones).

So Monroe and Hodges shamelessly step on the toes of the pair of cops (Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody) who are officially on the case. The mismatched partners also enlist the help of a stoner thief they've apprehended, played by Seann William Scott, who sits in the back seat as they drive around the city and -- a la Joe Pesci in a Lethal Weapon sequel -- and kibbitzes.

Its title having been changed from A Couple of Dicks to A Couple of Cops to Cop Out, Smith's latest is in the tradition of the interracial buddy-cop flick that surfaced in 1982 with 48 Hrs. and thrived in the eighties with the Lethal Weapon series leading the way. But it neither captures the energetic spirit of those actioners nor does it satirize them with any success.

For hit-or-miss auteur Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Jersey Girl, Zack and Miri Make a Porno), Cop Out is the first film he has directed that he did not also write. Unfortunately, the script by brothers Robb and Mark Cullen puts a very low premium on authenticity, with subplots competing with instead of complementing each other. And Smith is almost amateurishly oblivious of shot-to-shot continuity.

Well out of his element in elaborate action scenes, Smith does little from the director's chair to anchor the casually and senselessly violent goings-on in the real world or finesse the awkward tone shifts.

And while Willis, who can do this kind of material in his sleep, brings a cool professionalism to the table, Morgan -- who is both appealing and occasionally belly-laugh funny -- still could have used some help in building an actual performance. He's promising but inexperienced and undisciplined, and his director doesn't help him much by giving him far too much rope.

Kevin Smith's sporadically funny but clumsy and sloppy action comedy, Cop Out, doesn't exactly sell out, but is more of a strikeout than a knockout. icelebz