I'll defend JERSEY GIRL. I even find MALLRATS entertaining. But I can't defend this. The best thing I can say about Kevin Smith's buddy cop comedy is that it's not all his fault. The project is his first as a hired director. He didn't write this one; Robb and Mark Cullen did. So part of the blame is on them. It's like a nine year old was hired to remake 48 HOURS and all the nine-year-old has ever read his entire life is the backs of Garbage Pail Kids cards.
Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis, DIE HARD) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan, TV's 30 ROCK) are longtime partners. After a botched stakeout, they are suspended without pay. This causes a dilemma for Jimmy because he has to pay for his daughter's wedding and now he's broke. His plan is to sell his top baseball card in order to finance the event, so he doesn't have to swallow his ego and let his ex-wife's new husband Roy (Jason Lee, MALLRATS) pay for it. Guess what? The baseball card get stolen.
So when Jimmy and Paul go out to hunt it down, they get wrapped up in a drug ring, lead by Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz, THE TERMINAL), a walking caricature of a Latino drug dealer. Along the way, the cops get attached to annoying informant Dave (Seann William Scott, AMERICAN PIE) and the damsel in distress Gabriela (Ana de la Reguera, NACHO LIBRE).
The potty and pop culture reference humor seems suited for Smith, but none of it has the wit he brings when he writes it. It's all lame sitcom-level "shock." TWO AND A HALF MEN comes to mind, but that's being mean to the TV show. Paul endlessly discusses how he has to wait till he gets home to take a crap. He gets into a chase sequence dressed like a cellphone. He interrogates people using lines from movies that don't even seem suited for an interrogation. Dave mocks Paul from the back seat of the car like a child mimicking every word someone says. All these comedy bits have one thing in common they go on forever. Sometimes they beat the viewer down long enough that they get a chuckle just to break the tension of the torture.
As for the action elements, they're all stock elements. Nothing ever really seems at jeopardy. So what if Jimmy can't pay for the wedding? Roy is there with all the money in the world. So outside of some male shrinkage issues there isn't really an issue. In a filler subplot, Paul worries that his wife Debbie (Rashida Jones, I LOVE YOU, MAN) is cheating on him. He is such a wimp about it that one can't blame her if she is. As for the damsel in distress, we're given no real reason to care about her plight other than she's a pretty woman in danger.
Willis and Morgan are wasted. Willis smirks through the whole thing. We're not sure if he's thinking, "what have I signed up for?" or "I want to strangle that fat pothead behind the camera." Morgan mumbles through all his lines and takes every bit over-the-top trying to make it funny. The opposite occurs.
The original title for the film was A COUPLE OF DICKS, but that was shot down. Hey dicks means detectives so what's the problem? Thinking that title was witty sums up the entire production.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
