FILM REVIEW Let’s Be Cops

COP OUT?Damon Wayans Jr and Jake Johnson star in ‘Let’s Be Cops’.

Let’s just be friends


Cinema
Ciara Galvin

I classify myself as a ‘New Girl’ fanatic. The comedy series centres on the adorable but dorky ‘Jess’ played by Zooey Deschanel of ‘500 Days of Summer’ fame. It’s not to everyone’s liking, and admittedly it mostly attracts a female audience, but the hilarious cringe-fest between Jess and fellow room mate Nick (Jake Johnson) provides a great deal of comedy gold.
So when I saw two New Girl characters were starring together in a new ‘buddy cop’ comedy ‘Let’s Be Cops’ I was more than interested to go along and see it. However, as there has been many ‘buddy cop’ comedies over the years – ‘The Heat’, ‘21 Jump Street’, ‘Rush Hour’ to name a few – I felt this one would have to be very very good to stick out.
‘Let’s Be Cops’ is different to all of its predecessors, mainly because the cops aren’t real cops. Ryan (Jake Johnson) and Justin (Damon Wayans Jr) pretend to be cops after they don legitimate police uniforms, complete with bullet-proof vests, for a ‘fancy dress’ college reunion.
First off, they arrive to the party only to find that it is, in fact, a masquerade ball. After they leave, they get some much-wanted attention from females while innocently walking down the street, and it dawns on them that people think they are real policemen.
They test their believability by asking people to ‘freeze’, causing a skateboarder to come off his skateboard suddenly.
In ‘real life’, Ryan is a down-and-out former football player who has been living off a pay cheque he received from appearing in a genital herpes ad, while Justin is a computer game developer who cannot get his team to believe in his new idea.
So rather then face these realities, the guys choose to continue pretending to be cops. Ryan  watches YouTube videos during the day to learn each police code for different offences.
Things look up for a while. Justin attracts the attention of a waitress he has liked for some time, but never had the confidence to ask out. Ryan is enjoying himself so much he purchases a decommissioned police car.
Soon though, they become entangled with the ‘token mobsters’, led by a dirty detective (Andy Garcia), and they have to become ‘real’ cops in order to bring down the criminal gang.
The film takes off in a Martin Lawrence direction à la ‘Blue Streak’ and ‘Big Momma’s House’ as the duo must keep up the façade and dress up to infiltrate the gang.  
There are some amusing parts – I use the term ‘amusing’ because I cannot say they were funny. Granted there were only three people at the screening, but not one laugh was exchanged between the three of us.
One smile-inducing scene sees the pair mistaken for strippers. They take to the roles well, despite the women exclaiming ‘eeeww’ when Ryan takes off his shirt. Another scene which raised a smile involved a sobriety test on members of the unsuspecting mob that included them gyrating and twerking at the side of the road.  
Pupa, a Bob Marley-esque van driver played by Keegan-Michael Key, somewhat redeems the film. The ten minutes he is on screen generate more laughs than the rest of the film put together.
Ultimately though, the laughs are way too few and far between. In truth, the real cops in ‘Superbad’ were funnier than this pair.
I went home and watched ‘21 Jump Street’, and found it funnier. That says it all really.

Rating 4 out of 10