LET’S BE COPS (Luke Greenfield). 100 minutes. Now playing. See listing. Rating: NNN
Okay, first of all you’re going to want to deduct at least one N from my Let’s Be Cops rating if you don’t watch New Girl.
The entire movie depends on the easy chemistry of two of that show’s co-stars, Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans, Jr. Here they’re starring in a dopey comedy about two Los Angeles roommates who dress up as LAPD officers for a costume party, keep the charade going for fun and wind up in a turf war with a Georgian gangster (James D’Arcy).
There is barely a plot beyond Johnson getting seriously into the cop thing and Wayans trying to talk him out of the genuinely foolhardy stuff – only to commit to the bit himself when it seems to impress a young woman (Nina Dobrev) on whom he’s been crushing.
As they edge into the world of real cops and robbers, they befriend an actual officer (Rob Riggle) and a dreadlocked maniac (the invaluable Keegan-Michael Key), and the whole thing becomes a series of escalating “yes, and…” scenes. That’s when Let’s Be Cops really comes to life, with director/co-writer Luke Greenfield just letting his actors goof around.
And then the third act comes, in which shit predictably gets real and all the character stuff is sidelined for a proper action climax. That’s regrettable, because Edgar Wright already did that to perfection in Hot Fuzz, and Let’s Be Cops doesn’t have the vision, the budget or the script to compare.
If you don’t already like Johnson’s irascible, shouty slacker act or Wayans’s inappropriately excitable sidekick persona, you probably won’t enjoy Let’s Be Cops as much as I did. But if you just want to watch the guys from New Girl screwing around for an hour and a half, trading lines and slowly growing from childish dolts into semi-reliable heroes… well, this is the movie where they do that.
