Norman Robberson (Chevy Chase) is a typical husband and father who lives in the idyllic suburb of Pleasant Valley with his wife Helen (Dianne Wiest) and three kids with young vampire obcessed Billy (Miko Hughes), delinquent middle son Kevin (Jason James Richtor), and teenage daughter Cindy (Fay Masterson). While Norman goes to his mundane office job everyday, Norman often fantasizes about being a cop and has an encyclopedic knowledge of all the cop shows catching them in re-runs and renting episodes from video stores. When the police department learns notorious and violent counterfeiter Horace Osborn (Robert Davi) is hiding out in Pleasant Valley, the department sends gizzled veteran cop Jake Stone (Jack Palance) and his young partner Tony Moore (David Barry Gray) to stakeout the area using Robberson's home as the surveillance point. Norman is excited for the opportunity to get in on the action, but Stone finds himself irritated by Norman's antics.
Cops and Robbersons is a 1994 comedy vehicle for Chevy Chase that was one of the more "family skewing" roles the comedian took in the 90s as Chase's previous films such as Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Nothing but Trouble were underperformers and the market started favoring broader more family orientated comedies popularized by the works of Chris Columbus and John Hughes. Released in April of 1994, the film opened in an unexceptional second place behind sleeper hit Four Weddings and a Funeral in its sixth weekend and eventually closed out its run with $11 million making it financial disappointment. Critical reception was dismal with many making unfavorable comparisons to the film Stakeout and also making unfavorable comparisons between Chase's Norman Robberson and his Clark Griswold character. Cops and Robbersons is the kind of movie where it feels like they started with the title and then crudely tried to build a movie around it.
The movie is comparable to other broad police comedies of the time such as Stakeout, but is more targeted to the same audience that made Kindergarten Cop and to a lesser extent Cop and a Half successful. Cops and Robbersons is better than Cop and a Half by virtue of having better performances and a seemingly smoother production, but it's rather lacking when compared to Kindergarten Cop Chevy Chase is a funhouse mirror exaggeration of his Clark Griswold character as he plays Norm Robberson as so massively thickheaded you wonder how he's able to hold down a job or keep a roof over his head due to his multitude of idiot decisions that are divorced from reality. Chase is always at his best playing characters who fit his wiseass persona such as how Clark Griswold is properly written in Vacation and Christmas Vacation, Fletcher in Fletch or Fletch Lives, or Ty Webb in Caddyshack. The character that Chase plays so doesn't match his talents that it honestly feels like it was more written in mind for someone from a sitcom of the time like Tim Allen from Home Improvement or Ed O'Neill during Married with Children because these are basically sitcom characters doing sitcom things. Jack Palance is doing his usual growling intense performance, but he did give me some laughs such as his explanation to Robert Davi's character that Norm recently underwent a lobotomy (which probably makes more sense than it should) and the lion's share of what few laughs there are in this film mostly come from Palance.
Cops and Robbersons has a talented cast and isn't painful like some comic misfires, but it's also not nearly funny enough to sustain its paper thin premise that relies on the old staple of the "idiot plot" to keep itself going. The end result is yet another unfortunate misstep in the 90s leg of Chase's career but at least it's more watchable than his late night talk show.
