Flics en service

So help me, I found Cop Out to be not completely bad. Yes, that's a backhanded compliment, but I assure you that it's completely deserved. Cop Out, from its inane title to its derivative plot, has no business being anything but a hokey hoedown of banal buddy cop dopey behavior. And yet's it's not as gut-wrenchingly awful as all that.

Cop Out stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as veteran police partners on the trail of a gangbanger (Guillermo Diaz) who loves baseball memorabilia and who just happened to steal Willis' super-valuable baseball card, the one he was going to have to sell to finance his daughter's wedding; better to do that than have his wife's new, rich husband pay for it all.

But that cop-movie aspect is almost irrelevant. What matters, and the only thing that really puts this one in the same general universe as the likes of, say, Lethal Weapon (in terms of approach, not overall quality), is the thrust-and-parry repartee between straight-arrow Willis (a 180 from his John McClane character/caricature) and loose-cannon, uber-hip Morgan. They're funny together, and they're given funny things to say in funny situations. That helps a lot.

What's puzzling about this movie is that Kevin Smith directed it, the first of his that he didn't also write. That's puzzling because the dialog isn't really this movie's strong point. If I hadn't seen Smith's name attached to this in writing, I'd never have guessed he had had a hand in it.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter much, as it's just plain not terrible. You can tell I'm trying not to go overboard in my hyperbole, right? I want to present you with a level-headed, even-handed look at whether this is worth your time. And it is, with lowered expectations. It's amusing, although not for the whole family to watch.