Movie review: Cop Out *

When I think about the 1980s, parachute pants, leg warmers, and hair teased to the heavens come to mind.

Kevin Smith must think about '80s cop comedies.

And judging by his latest film, Cop Out, the director has spent considerable time boning up on the genre, not that there's much to study. 1980s cop comedies reliably featured at least one smart-alecky cop, sometimes two, who bypassed department rules to apprehend a really bad guy (usually a drug dealer), all the while clowning around at everyone else's expense. By film's end, the cop apprehends/kills the suspect in a shoot-out, wins the girl he's protected during the investigation, and one-ups his ill-tempered superior.

Out of such simplicity, Cop Out is born.

Throw in the return of '80s soundtrack legend Harold Faltermeyer and it's 1984 and Beverly Hills Cop all over again. Only Cop Out is nowhere near the original Beverly Hills Cop, the pinnacle of the '80s cop comedy genre.

And Cop Out star Tracy Morgan can't touch the wide-smile appeal and puckish nature of old-school Eddie Murphy.

In those days Murphy successfully carried so-so films on his broad comedy shoulders. It didn't matter how bad the movie was, you could bank on Murphy being funny in it, like 1986's The Golden Child.

Morgan, though, is a comic actor best taken in small doses, like his brilliant turn on 30 Rock as the pampered but clueless star of a late-night comedy show. The high-energy comic has a gift for owning scenes. But take his 10 minutes on the NBC sitcom and stretch it more than nine times that amount and he becomes excruciating.

Someone must have known this — Smith, perhaps — because Bruce Willis is cast as Morgan's partner.

Willis is Jimmy Monroe and Morgan is Paul Hodges, two New York detectives whose rogue antics earn them a suspension from the force after an informant is shot during one of their undercover operations.

Jimmy just wants to recover a pricey baseball card that was stolen from him. He needs it to pay for his daughter's elaborate wedding. Paul is worried that his wife, Debbie (Rashida Jones, you're better than this), is cheating on him with their next-door neighbor. Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody are around as rival detectives who have a real beef with Jimmy and Paul for botching their investigation into a local drug dealer. And Seann William Scott pops up as a mouthy crook fond of playing mind games and telling knock-knock jokes about Paul's wife.

Throw in some bodily-function jokes and you've got some real funny and sophisticated material going on.

Despite a deserved reputation for such crudity, director Smith is better than this. Chasing Amy and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, easily the best of his comedy oeuvre, are smart and insightful examinations of relationships, friendships, and social classes. Smith also wrote those films; it's not a coincidence he didn't write Cop Out, which was scripted by the Cullen brothers, Robb and Mark, making their feature-length debut.

Smith knows his cinema. Spend a few hours zipping through his work and you'll see references to dozens of films in lifted dialogue and shot-for-shot tributes.

His Cop Out is meant as an homage to the '80s cop comedy, guilty cinema pleasures that were not particularly good movies but were good for a few laughs.

But there's nothing pleasurable about Cop Out. It's tiresome and witless, and by the end, you'll only feel guilty about wasting time and money to see it.

Contact Kirk Baird at: kbaird@theblade.com

or 419-724-6734.