Believe it or not, they cut this from the movie.
Why I Saw It: I like Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson too much to miss their major release debuts. Also, I look at this as a direct comparison with 30 Minutes or Less, which I saw in theaters.
Cast: Look, I'm all for Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. being as big as possible. Johnson has consistently been my favorite part of New Girl and fits perfectly in with the slacker phase comedy has been in for the past decade. Between Happy Endings and New Girl, Wayans has proven to be more versatile than I expected. Simply put, there's a lot of scenes in this movie that work only because of them. Rob Riggle gets to play it straight for a change and that is so refreshing to see. Nina Dobrev isn't asked to do anything more than be pretty (a resounding success, by the way) which is a disappointment. She deserved more to do. Andy Garcia checks in long enough to be a standard bad guy. Natasha Leggero takes a small role and uses it to make an impression. Keegan-Michael Key basically shows up like he's playing a character from his sketch show.
Plot: There's two ways to look at this movie: 1) It's about two guys in LA, on the wrong side of 30, who are living life on the sidelines, pretend to be cops in order to get their confidence back, and take charges of their lives. 2) It's about two slackers who brazenly ignore the law and abuse the privileges of the badge by impersonating police officers. I did my best to look at it the first way. Even still, it's a very basic and thin premise. It's an action-comedy and it follows the expected beats. No character or opposition is introduced without coming into play later (making for a very small world given the setting). The movie remembers that there needs to be a story in the third act, dropping most of the humor and becoming much more of an action movie, which the leads have a harder time pulling off. It's the kind of high-concept, weakly constructed script you'd expect from an August release. Needless to say, it's a completely implausible movie.
Elephant in the Room: Uhh, Ferguson? Fox has the worst luck with comedies. Two years ago, they had The Watch (formerly The Neighborhood Watch) come out not long after the Trayvon Martin incident. Now they have a movie about to men abusing the power cops have, only a week after the questionable circumstances in Ferguson, MO. I'm not sure what the movie's ceiling ever was, but that didn't help it succeed and made for some awkward moments.
To Sum Things Up:
This isn't a good movie, a strong comedy, or exciting popcorn cinema. There's some solid laughs and likable actors in the lead roles. If you squint your eyes real hard and kind of tilt your head at an angle, you can almost see a coherent story that doesn't require our supposedly likeable leads to do deplorable things to set it all in motion. This will go down with movies like the aforementioned 30 Minutes or Less, Our Idiot Brother, and Wanderlust as amiable, but forgettable. I can't recommend that you go see it, but I can't very well find much else for you to see instead in theaters right now.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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