Let's Be Cops - Film Review

AT the start of Let’s Be Cops, there is a scene set in the boardroom of a video game developer.

In it, there are a number of developers taking a pitch on an idea from an underling who is trying to pitch a game based on patrol duties in the Los Angeles Police Department – like playing the right side of the law against Grand Theft Auto, if you will. But through various boardroom-type meddlers who think they know better, it somehow becomes Firefighters vs Zombies to become a cash-in on alleged popular styles and bring in sales by the boatload. There is even a stupidly naff display of it later on down the line – indeed, the games here look very much like they were made on software that would’ve been out of date when the PS2 was launched, nevermind the current super-gaming consoles.

One can’t help but wonder if similar bizarre antics and boardroom politics at 20th Century Fox resulted in this being spat out. Certainly, at face value, one can’t help but think a buddy pretend-cop movie starring two of Zooey Deschanel’s undercards on New Girl is an odd thing to wind up in the cinema.

Its also not been helped for its US release by its inadvertent timing – this film came out four days after the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri that has led to protest, riots and military-style police control, which has made international headlines. This also gives it an odd divorce from reality, as aside from one scene where our leads stumble across stolen SWAT team gear and heavy grade weaponry and toy with using it, there is little to glamorise the military side of the cops seen on the news for most of the last month.

Instead, we get a fairy straight-cut plot. We meet struggling game designer Justin (Damon Wayans Jr) and washed up college quarterback Ryan (Jake Johnson), who live in a small studio apartment in Los Angeles and are contemplating moving back to Ohio. Ahead of their university reunion, Justin makes the police film pitch with mannequins using police uniforms, and mistakenly thinking the reunion is a fancy dress party, the two turn up in them.

After embarrassing themselves at the party, they find the people on the LA streets respect them in their cop uniforms, leading to one of them deciding he likes the buzz and wants to keep on doing it. This leads through some fairly predictable troupes – the other cops mistaking them for real, the one who feels guilty and wants out but still uses it to get the woman he wants, the Russian gangsters they cross paths with frequently, the abuse of their fake power, and more.

Plot wise, its fairly by the numbers, but that was probably to be expected. There are funny films out there with plots you could write on the back of a post-it note. This, however, isn’t one. A lot of the humour feels weirdly flat, with some very tired racial, sexual and authority-baiting stereotypes passing for jokes. So much of the jokes feel phoned-in or done better by older films or TV, and after a while its hard to really care for what’s going on.

The film is not 100% without merit, but its an irritatingly dull watch and after a while, you really do wish that you were somewhere else.

1.5/5