Movie Reviews: Movies I Haven't Seen

The problem with movies is that typically, you can't form an opinion on them unless you've seen them. But to see them takes time and money, which you'd rather not waste if you're pretty sure they're going to be awful. So I prefer to judge movies based on the ads. Easier, cheaper, more fun.

I watched a lot of Olympics, so I can recite verbatim pretty much any of the 6 or so ads they had playing over and over throughout. Two were for movies: "Cop-Out" and ... uh ... I forget the other one.

"Cop-Out"

My immediate reaction to this one was simply "Are you fucking kidding me?" So wait, you have the hard-as-nails white cop, played by Bruce Willis, and his wild-ass black partner, played by Tracy Morgan. And they may be, shall we say, buddies? These cops? Ergo, they are buddy-cops? It's so cliche it's almost genius. Is this a parody? The ads didn't make it seem like it was. I'm going to proceed assuming that it isn't.

Assuming that this is a straight exploitation of the buddy-cop formula, the name is the real beauty part. Like most bad movie titles, it's devised to be as easy to remember as possible: It's a well-worn phrase in the English language, and it has "cop" in it so you can easily associate with that one cop movie with the funny black guy. That's all par for the course -- the great part is that the phrase "cop-out" actually means "evading any sort of effort!!!" It's as if the movie is telling us "Hey, we realize we're not even trying here. We're just pushing some crap through the system to make a buck. You know it, and we know it, so let's just get this over with." Next we're going to see a movie about employees of the New York subway system called "Token Effort." Or a movie about a guy making a crappy movie called "I Hope This Movie Covers Expenses in the First Weekend and Gets Some Overseas Business Because It Sure Won't Have Legs."

My brother-in-law always talked about writing a buddy-cop movie, and allowing himself same exact amount of time to make the movie that the movie would run. So, basically, you could improv an entire movie in two hours. I think someone stole that idea for "Cop-Out."

I'm still not sure it's not a parody. If it is, my review could change dramatically. In fact, it would be my favorite movie ever if it turned out to be written by the writers of "The Onion" and it actually killed off Tracy Morgan in the first few minutes, replacing him with another gruff, white loner cop. Maybe have this new partner also played by Bruce Willis, except with a mustache. Bruce and Bruce II would hit it off immediately, and spend the rest of the movie at a bar. Then they fall for each other and spend the final half hour making love. Of all the actors in the world, I think Bruce Willis would be the perfect choice for a character who spends the whole movie making love to himself.

There would be so many ways to screw with the audience on this one. Why don't more filmmakers do that? I would. I would make a movie in which, after an hour of a typical plot about the CIA or a wacky family's Christmas celebration or whatever, the entire world explodes for no reason, and the last hour is just a long shot of empty space.

Or better: Maybe a period piece in which well-mannered and overdressed people sit in an English manor, and nothing much happens at all. Several plot lines get started ("Wait, Mr. Noseworthy has rudely failed to appear for our morning constitution around the garden!"), only to have them immediately resolved in an anti-climactic way ("Oh, actually, Mr. Noseworthy's waiting outside for you." "Oh, never mind then.") It goes on and on like that for an hour, and then suddenly Boba Fett bursts in through a window and starts shooting everyone. Then Rambo bursts out of a kitchen door and starts shooting Boba Fett and his army of Oompa-Loompas. Eventually Rambo gets pinned down, and as Boba levels his gun at Rambo's face, he makes a long and dumb speech about Rambo killing his aunt or something. Then he says "OK, Rambo, say your prayers," and suddenly, at the last second, Peter O'Toole appears and shoots Boba in the back with a bazooka. It turns out he was Mr. Noseworthy the whole time! Close-up on O'Toole, who says, dramatically, "I'm ready for my walk around the garden!" Fade to credits. Thunderous applause.

Anyway, that's all besides the point. "Cop-Out" looks excruciatingly bad, and though I love Tracy Morgan and think he should be in every movie, I would rather chop off my own balls and eat them than see "Cop-Out."

"The Other Movie"

Uhh ... I still can't remember what the other movie was that I saw ads for constantly during the Olympics. You guys watched the Olympics -- what was it?

P.S.: I looked it up and "Cop-Out" is indeed meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But how far in cheek, really? The gags in the ads really don't look very tongue-in-cheek; they look like they were cut straight out of "48 Hours." The alleged tongue-in-cheekness may itself by a cop-out enabling them to lazily run through an easy formula and still save some face.

But regardless, the clincher is that it was directed by Kevin Smith, the worst, most smug, most painfully unfunny director in history. That clinches it: I would happily chop of my balls and both my legs, gouge out my eyes, and carve out my still-beating heart so I could use my last dying moments to eat them all raw rather than see "Cop-Out."