Cop Out

Despite vetoing its original title, ‘A Couple of Dicks’, the studio gave ‘Clerks’ director Kevin Smith a free rein on this pitifully unfunny ‘hommage’ to ’80s action comedies. Sadly, his Brooklyn buddy cops are not so much mis matched as miscast: comedian Tracy Morgan’s (right) tiresome shtick as Bruce Willis’s long-time, loose-cannon partner is more suited to the cheeky sidekick character he should be playing, while Willis’s role as the grumpy stooge wastes his talent for snappy dialogue delivery. Not that there’s any quick-fire humour to be  had from Robb and Mark Cullen’s lacklustre script; or much in the way of gunfire either. The tedious plot concerns the theft by a memorabilia-obsessed Mexican drug dealer Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz) of Willis’s rare, valuable baseball card, which the cop needs to sell to pay for his daughter’s wedding. To add insult to injury, Smith lured the composer of the  ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ soundtrack, Harold Faltermeyer, out of retirement to write the electronic score for this puerile slapstick crap.