Kevin Smith’s Cop Out So Clich-Filled It Just Might Work!

Cop Out establishes its movie lineage right away, with a slow-motion toe-to-head tilt up, set to the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn,” of black-cop/white-cop buddies Jimmy and Paul swaggering stone-faced toward the camera. Director/editor Kevin Smith (who notably didn’t write the Cop Out script; this is the Clerks auteur’s first feature-length work for hire) immortalizes his heroes as stock crime-flick badasses in their very first frame.

So far, so middlinguntil Smith complicates matters by following that shot with an opening sequence that sends Cop Out swerving into smarter territory: Determined to prove his bad-cop “acting” chops to a skeptical Jimmy (Bruce Willis), Paul (Tracy Morgan) interrogates a perp by subjecting him to an unrelenting marathon of movie character impersonations. Beginning with Al Pacino in Heat and moving, logically, through In the Heat of the Night and Training Day, Paul’s “homage” (which he pronounces “homm-ige”) eventually jumps off the rails. Jimmy, on the other side of the interrogation-room glass, can only gape at his partner’s increasingly non sequitur charade: “Dirty Dancing? Star Wars? Everything on cable?!?”

And so Cop Out announces itself as both loving “homage” to “everything on cable”particularly ’80s action comedies, referenced most directly by Harold Faltermeyer’s cheap synth score and an honest-to-goodness plot song (called “Soul Brothers” and sung by Patti LaBelle)and a sly subversion of genre. It’s a movie that shamelessly trafficks in the clichs of other cop movies, while also engaging both characters and audience in the spectator sport of catching references to those very movies. Cop Out only works as well as it doesand it works exponentially better than it shouldbecause the movie-trivia game is played smirk-free, with palpable joy from everyone involved.

Jimmy, a swinging-dick career NYPD cop threatened by his ex-wife’s young, rich new husband (Jason Lee), tries to sell a priceless, long-treasured baseball card so he can pick up the tab for his daughter’s wedding. That plan immediately goes horribly awry, thanks to interventions from Seann William Scott and the scene-swiping Guillermo Diaz as a textbook Mexican movie gangster with a baseball obsession. Jimmy and Paul have no choice but to Break All the Rules.

The plot is almost an afterthought, an obvious MacGuffin intended to steamroll a path for the charisma and chemistry of the two leads. Morgan has been brutally undervalued for his work on the otherwise heavily awarded NBC series 30 Rock, possibly because it’s assumed that the incorrigible comedian he plays is just a riff on himself. In Cop Out, unchained from the temporal constraints and standards and practices of network TV and, according to the press notes, given free rein to improvise, Morgan of course works broad and blue, but he really surprises with his timing and self-control. There are comic set pieces in Cop Out that play out at a snail’s pace, turning awkward and uncomfortable for long stretches in order to build toward a big funny, and Morgan not only hangs on, but steers. Willis’s main order of business is to stay cool and look goodto provide a solid backboard for Morgan’s delirious lunacyand this he does well.

Like most of Smith’s movies, from Clerks to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to Zach and Miri Make a Porno, Cop Out tracks a small arc of maturation for dudes who filter their own lives through popular culture. There was a sincere love letter to the transformative power of filmmaking baked into Porno, but its impact was diluted by what felt like strained overtures to the Apatow audience. On the contrary, Cop Out works as a love letter to film fandom, and, amid the ample violence and genitalia jokes, its strength is its sincerity. Working with a full-on studio budget for the first time in his decade-and-a-half career, Smith is still making movies about guys just like him. It may be masturbatory, but it’s also some kind of creative integrity.

Kevin tweeted his own take on critical love/hate this morning, quite succinctly:

“Here’s the thing… *inhales* I’ve made movies that have been panned before, by critics who are still working, and some who I’ve outlasted. I came from a world where critics could make or break you (Janet Maslin’s CLERKS review in the NY Times made me). That world’s long dead. A movie like COP OUT, while an easy target for critics, is clearly not intended to impress those prone to show off their cinema erudition. Critics can stab at COP OUT with their poison pens all they want, but it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a funny flick.”

“Movie Marketing Madness” takes a look at the marketing campaign we discussed briefly above today, where they take a look at the poster, trailers, media, and online presence of “Cop Out”. It’s quite a lot more detail than you’d expect, with detailed reactions to all the different types of promotions used to make audiences aware that the movie was heading into theaters this month.

This week, Kevin told the LA Times a little more detail about how “A Couple of Dicks” became “Cop Out”. We hadn’t heard this bit before:

…Unfortunately, “Cop Out” was a title registered to the great comedy director Blake Edwards, who wasn’t interested in giving it up to Warners, owing to some old bad blood. Luckily, Michael Pitt, Smith’s first assistant director, had an Edwards connection: His father, Lou Pitt, was Edwards’ agent. When Smith heard that Lou Pitt and Edwards were having dinner together, he immediately called.

“I got on the phone with Mr. Pitt and said, ‘Would you please pass along to Mr. Edwards that “S.O.B” is my sixth favorite movie of all time and that “Victor/Victoria” is in my top 25 and if there was any way that he would help out a fellow filmmaker and save him from being stuck with a lame title, I’d really appreciate it.’ “

The personal plea worked. Edwards agreed to let Smith have the title. “It was a huge save for us,” Smith says. “He’s not just a great filmmaker, but he’s a class act too.”

One of our scoopers noticed the marketing blitz happening around New York City while in town this week, and sent us a few snaps of the various giant billboards. Good marketing campaign as far as awareness, for sure. If the goal was to stretch beyond the internet audience and to John Q. Moviegoer (and the little old lady in the office), we’ll say, mission accomplished.