LET'S BE COPS LET'S BE COPS
LET’S BE COPS
DIRECTOR: Luke Greenfield
CAST: Damon Wayans Jr, Jake Johnson, Rob Riggle, Nina Dobrev, James D’Arcy, Andy Garcia, Keegan-Michael Key
CLASSIFICATION:
RUNNING TIME:
RATING: *
LIKE a downmarket Sharknado of buddy-policemen movies, Let’s Be Cops seeks to capitalise on the success of the 21 Jump Street franchise.
Johnson and Wayans jr play a couple of 30-year-old washed-ups living in Los Angeles who, for reasons far too convoluted and tiresome to go into here, possess LAPD uniforms.
Walking home from the party they wear them to, they find they’re getting female attention and respect for the first time since college, a frisson of self-worth that leads Ryan (Johnson), a former football hero, to take the act as far as he can.
Ryan’s best friend, Justin (Wayans), is more reticent, but he keeps up the ruse partly to impress a pretty waitress (Nina Dobrev).
Director and co-writer Greenfield brings no flair or energy to a flimsy premise that, like a piece of gum he’s found on his shoe, grows only thinner and more annoying the longer he tries to stretch it out.
Worse, he fails to capitalise on the chemistry between Johnson and Wayans, who have proved their mutually supportive mojo on the sitcom New Girl.
Let’s Be Cops is the kind of movie that depends for laughs on tired bits involving kids swearing and sustains interest with frequent excuses to ogle women dancing provocatively in bars, at parties or, on a skankily dishevelled couch.
Johnson and Wayans are gifted comics, but are given way too little to do in a film that wends its way from set piece to set piece, not with antic glee but desultory randomness.
Things begin to look up when Riggle arrives on the scene, looking like he just popped in from his hilarious cameo in The Hangover. But like the two leads, he is quickly sucked into the Let’s Be Cops vortex of lazy plotting and uninspired execution. His first scene with the guys involves a break-in conducted for no apparent reason than to set up a cheap gag by a sumo wrestler.
After protracted sequences featuring a villain (D’Arcy) and a contraband runner (Key), Let’s Be Cops turns serious for its final half-hour, with Ryan and Justin confronting real crime and gun violence, making an unconvincing point about the difference between video-game mayhem and the real thing. If there’s any justice, the film-makers should get a stretch in movie jail. – Washington Post
If you liked Ride Along or Sex Tape you will like this.