Let's Be Cops

The movie inspired me to be a cop in my own right. Where can I perform a citizen’s arrest on the guy who gave the green light to this movie for 20th Century Fox?

In this Bro Comedy gone wrong, Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. star as Ryan and Justin – two guys from Ohio who never quite found the fame and fortune they were looking for when they made the move to Los Angeles. Both are 30-years old and neither is where they thought they would be in life or in their careers.

Justin is a frustrated video game designer working as an assistant because his company won’t produce his game.

Ryan is a former college football great who tried to make it in acting, but his only role to date was as a dude in a commercial for a herpes medicine.

Both are tired of the rejection and failure, so they decide to pack it up and head back to Ohio, but they have a costume party to attend that night. Justin has some cool and extremely realistic police officer costumes, so, when the two start walking around in those on the way to and from the party, people suddenly respect them. Ladies are attracted to them, and other cops treat them like fellow brothers in blue.

It was supposed to be one night of fun, but Justin and Ryan can’t resist the urge to start walking the beat dressed as cops, and they soon find themselves running afoul of a powerful crime syndicate.

Can Justin and Ryan find a way out of this mess, or do they have to crack the case for their own protection?

Johnson and Wayans have oodles of energy and charm to spare, but they can’t save Let’s Be Cops.

Writer/director Luke Greenfield and co-writer Nicholas Thomas rely too much on tired formulaic twists and turns when the funniest and most entertaining parts of the movie are the outrageous and unexpected moments running on Bro Power.

Essentially, Let’s Be Cops starts as a zany comedy featuring two likable dimwits, but falls apart and becomes a predictable action movie about two likable dimwits who are not logically capable of doing anything we see on screen. When it’s comedy, we are ready to laugh. When the mood switches to drama, we can’t suspend disbelief enough to go along with what is happening on the screen.

It’s a shame, because Johnson and Wayans deserve better. They aren’t the next coming of Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello (if you don’t know who they are, please look them up, you might learn something), but the two have some fun chemistry together and bring a zeal and whimsy to the material that makes you laugh at the funny stuff, even when it might not be that compelling. If you need two guys to be the ultimate comedy salesmen, they are selling the heck out of these jokes and getting full price when they should be on the discount rack.

Sadly, Let’s Be Cops becomes overly conventional. The audience is stuck with a predictable love story involving Justin and the hot waitress he longs for. Ryan is dedicating himself to this unlike anything else he has in years, so we all know where that is going. I bet you can even figure out what Justin’s video game is all about before you walk into the movie.

Maybe they could show Let’s Be Cops to prisoners doing life in Attica, or would that be cruel and unusual punishment?

Let’s Be Cops is rated R for language including sexual references, some graphic nudity, violence and drug use.