Let's Be Cops

Oh really, you want to dress up as Cops... That should have its funny hijinxs right?

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THIS MOVIE?!?!

Sorry, I just don't really like when a movie insults my intelligence and that's what this movie does.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's be Cops is a comedy about two friends who go to LA to make it big. Ryan (played by Jake Johnson) wants to be an actor... sorta. And Justin (played by Damons Waynes Jr.) wants to be a video game designer. Both of them are just losers. Justin is too timid to go out and get what he wants, and Ryan is, well sort of a has been, doesn't take responsibility... I guess.

Well when going to a costume party, they get their hands on some legitimate police uniforms. And who would have guessed it, they actually look like cops.

And then Ryan takes it WAAAAAAAAY too far.

Now I could chalk it up to the fact that Ryan is just the goofy character, but this guy is just dumb. At first it seems like he's just doing this to pick up women, but for some reason he just gets WAY into it. He starts responding to police calls and while they start pretty harmless, they suddenly get wrapped up into a mafia and illegal arms trafficking.

This only exacerbates the worst part of the movie, and that is Dayman Waynes Jr.

I'm just realizing now that both Johnson and Waynes were in New Girl... This is just an extension of these two characters from New Girl in their own movie... that sucks. What was Zooey Deschanel and the other guys busy?

But Waynes is the worst in this movie because he's the most nagging person I have ever met. I think its the fact that Ryan is not a real character and gets into this whole Let's Be Cops thing WAY too much that suddenly the normal amount of saying this idea is horrible just gets annoying and whiny. But Justin is just horrible at saying no. He's always saying, this is a bad idea. We shouldn't do this. We could get arrested. We're going to die. I shouldn't dress up like a Jamaican Drug dealer. (Actually happens) and yet no matter what, he still does. After the first three times this happens, you just know he's not going to win over Ryan. Ryan does whatever he wants and that's just it. So why bore us with this character?

Cause he needs to be the guy who gets the girl...

For all the slightly racist stereotypes this movie does... and there are a lot of them, I will say its the first movie in a long time that I've seen a black guy get with a white girl. Not something you see very often.

I've put a video about this before, I think the friends over at Cracked did a good job at explaining this before, so I won't beat a dead horse.

But even the relationship is garbage. Nina Dobrev's character gets involved with Justin because she thinks he's a cop. He says he's going to tell her and he thinks its super important and while most times when this cliche happens, there's a good reason he can't tell. In this, he just doesn't. There are plenty of opportunities to tell her, its really just a phone call and Hell he could have even made a joke out of it after the first time he runs into her ex boyfriend the gang member. But no, he doesn't. And it just overplays a cliche we've seen over and over again.

This is my usual time when I saw Nina Dobrev is fucking gorgeous but... that's really all she has going for her in this movie. Its very cliche and she doesn't do anything except put makeup on Justin once so I'm gonna say she's a shitty character and I was bored with her.

Now I like Jake Johnson. I like him in New Girl, I liked him in Drinking Buddies, but I don't think the guy can pull his own movie. He makes the good goofy character getting into hjinxes. But at the same time they try and give him problems and his own personal demons he has to get over, which I think could work in a better script, but he's sharing with Justin and so I'm not sure what I'm suppose to see this guy as. The goofy protagonist has been who needs to take responsibility, or the goofy friend pulling Justin into crazy hijinxs?

I can't really decide.

Again, a part of me thinks that Jake Johnson is really funny and honestly the parts I loved the most were with him.

But the fact they couldn't decide whether or not Ryan was a charicature or a serious character made it very hard for me to like him and it made it very hard for me to take him seriously.

The funny thing about this movie is that it sounds like a really funny concept.

Honestly, I saw the trailer, I thought it looked really funny. While I said the movie insults my intelligence, it is a funny concept that I feel could have been really fun, if it has surprised me at all or had been at all original.

And usually I'm not one to press for originality. I know it can be difficult to come up with new shit that blows peoples mind. Sometimes its good to get the same shit just done a little bit better every time.

But the reason I'm harping on this movie is that it is full of cliches and its something that I swear I could have written in high school. In high school I was in speech. I did a category where I wrote original speeches/stories that I would perform and compete against other works. These performances lots of times were really funny but they were full of cliches and at the end of the day really weren't that good.

Let's Be Cops reminds me of the performances I've seen at these speech tournaments. Funny, but not creative or movie worthy in anyway. And yet some how this movie was made.

And honestly, this movie didn't really know what it wanted to be. Buddy Cop comedies are not difficult. They've been doing them for years. Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Rush Hour.

But those movies knew that if you were going to be making a comedy out of police work, you have to make it serious enough for it to be believable but not too grisly that it loses the comedy feel to it.

Yet Let's Be Cops takes so long to actually be a buddy cop comedy like so many movies before it. Mainly because they're not cops!

I feel like this movie was trying to ride on the coat tails of movies like 21 Jump Street, a film about police work but done well to a level that is both funny and has the action in it to make the film interesting.

This movie is just too cliched and confused about its existence that its hard to really enjoy it. In fact a lot of times it just feels like its insulting my intelligence. They make it this big moment when Justin figures out that impersonating a police officer is a crime. And yet they continue to keep the charade up and police officers actually believe them!

I was originally going to say that Rob Riggle was one of the better parts of this movie... but the more I think about this movie the more I realize, he's a fucking dumbass!

I'll concede that he has his moments where he's pretty funny in that Rob Riggle way but he's freaking dumb in this movie. There is a level of unbelievability that I just cannot handle out of this movie and Rob Riggle only makes it worse.

Now I've been shitting on this movie for the entire review and I was going to list off the few things that I actually liked about this film... but that list is getting smaller and smaller the more I think about it. I'm going to do my best but I won't be able to come up with much.

The first thing is the villains. James D'Arcy plays this just crazy mother fucker leader of a gang. Now I realized just now, days after watching the film that D'Arcy was Sixsmith in Cloud Atlas. Isn't that an awesome range right there?

And then you have Andy Garcia. And I swear, even though he's probably phoning it in for this role and he didn't even shave his beard... I loved Garcia in this movie.

Its a shame because I'd love to see Garcia as a corrupt cop because he's daunting. He's a little scary and incredibly underplayed in this movie. He was probably way too expensive and could have been in more scenes if they could afford him... but he wasn't.

I don't know. I liked him and I could see an awesome movie being made there. Not a comedy but a dark police thriller. I think it would be awesome! If that movie exists let me know but I would love to see that before I die.

Also, Keegan Michael Key.

He's not the best part of the movie, he's not even incredibly funny. But it was fun to see someone who actually gets comedy in this film. I in no way think Keegan Michael Key is the most hilarious man in the world but at least he's been funny for me in the past. I feel like he's a veteran of comedy at the very least.

I feel like he should have had a much bigger role and this movie would have been a hundred times better. He could have helped Ryan and Justin find petty crime, build up their reputation as the "new sheriffs in town" and make the reveal that they're not cops even better... but no. I think my point of bringing him up was that while the script was really shitty, he did what he could with it and gave me a couple laughs along the way.

Also... I thought that calling Justin Officer Chang was kind of funny. Not incredibly but I got a chuckle out of it... that is all...

Overall, the concept was decently funny. I like the idea of making a comedy out of two guys pretending to be cops. Its just a little ironic because there's a video game designer who has this idea for a video game. He builds it up, he hypes the shit out of it and when it comes out he's disappointed because he knows its shitty. He says, it sounded so good on paper.

And I think that's what happened with this movie. It sounded so good on paper but the end result was just kind of childish and not nearly the movie I thought I was going to get.

I went on much longer than I expected but the more I think about this movie, the more I don't like it. What do you think? Let me know, Comment and discuss below.

I'll leave you with this. There's probably a better video for this... but I don't care enough to find it. Here's an SNL skit with a cop in it. Laugh. Enjoy!