Cop Out

As a rule, I enjoy Kevin Smith. He is a fellow fattie, a regular dude who made it big and gets to do what many of us would love to do – make funny movies and earn lots of money doing it. He makes more of an effort to connect with his fan base than pretty much anyone I’ve ever seen and he really seems to understand that while he has worked extremely hard to get where he is, he is lucky to be there. Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Chasing Amy and Dogma are absolute gifts to movie goers. If you haven’t seen them, get off your ass and go get me some cake. Seriously, I’m hungry and I have a sweet tooth. I’ll tell you about the movies when you get back.

Cop Out is the first movie Smith has directed that he didn’t also write. This is no cause for celebration because he is a phenomenal writer. Robb and Mark Cullen, who did write this movie, are not even close to his level. Billy Connolly once said in an interview that he curses a lot in his stand up because it has a nice rhythm when you do it right. You see evidence of that in Smith’s own screenplays, but that particular bit of wisdom was not imparted upon the Cullens. This movie has problems - chief among them was the writing. It didn’t feel entirely worked through, like they filmed a rough draft hoping they could fill the holes as they went.

The story is convoluted, but this is a buddy comedy – story is a vehicle to move from joke to joke. For this movie to work, one needs to ask: 1. Are the jokes funny? 2. Are the people who are telling me the jokes funny? This is where personal preference comes in. I find Tracey Morgan hilarious. He is batshit crazy and shouts his lines like a 6 year old on a sugar rush. A lot of people I talk to find him annoying as fuck so they will frigging hate this film. Seann Williams Scott is great in the 12-14 minutes of screen time he actually gets.

Know who sucks big giant hairy balls though? Bruce Willis. Bruce fucking Willis is painful to watch all the way through this movie. He isn’t funny, most of the time he is barely amusing. The scene with Jason Lee discussing who will pay for his daughter’s marriage was one of the most poorly written and amateurish scenes I have ever seen. The scene with Fred Armisen? Fucking painful to watch. His part was terribly written and acted with a Kristen Stewart-esque awkwardness that actually made me feel a bit embarrassed for the guy.

Speaking of embarrassing, the guys in the Mexican drug gang. I still don’t know what Smith was going for. I know what I saw – overacting. They weren’t funny. They weren’t scary. Their presence certainly added conflict and urgency for Willis, but they were so poorly executed ... it would have been so much funnier had they gotten rid of them altogether and just made Scott the film’s sole obstacle to Willis’ quest to pawn that baseball card.

I’ve seen this twice – once on the big screen and once on the small screen. It doesn’t hold up to multiple viewings I’m afraid. I laughed a fair bit the first time I saw it. Not so much the second time. Unlike Zack and Miri, which makes me laugh every single time I watch it. I do not think this is Smith’s worst movie, and because I am a fan of his and I enjoy Tracey Morgan and Seann Williams Scott, I will probably rate this higher than most other people would.

I rate Cop Out 5 out of 10

Cooking With Stella

Prominently displayed on the DVD cover (not pictured here) of Cooking With Stella is this endorsement from Omar Mouallem of Vue Weekly - “Canada’s answer to Julie & Julia”. I disagree with Omar. I don’t think Canada ever asked that question, and if it did, this movie doesn’t really answer it. A few important distinctions:

1. Julie & Julia stars Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Look at the box cover on the DVD. There’s a picture of the two stars, the two people you see most on the screen, the titular roles as it were. In Cooking With Stella, the characters you see and care about most are Stella (Seema Biswas), Tannu (Shriya Saran) and Michael Laffont (Don McKellar). So why the fuck is Lisa Ray on the cover and her name listed second? She has maybe 10 minutes of screen time and is a raging cunt most of that time. Shriya Saran got shafted here.

2. Food. Cooking With Stella offers surprisingly little actual cooking. The story is mainly about the shenanigans of plucky house servant Stella Matthews and her petty thievery. Michael Laffont is a chef from Canada eager to learn the intricacies of Indian cooking. The movie gives us Stella’s clever tricks at overcoming crushing poverty by stealing groceries and overcharging for laundry services. At least Julie & Julia made me hungry.

3. Cooking With Stella gives us Maury Chaykin in a supporting role for comic relief. Julie & Julia gives us Stanley Tucci in a masterful supporting performance that is actually funny.

Cooking With Stella is a perfectly harmless, moderately amusing little movie. It wears its’ Canadian roots proudly and never pretends to be American, which I admire. Few things are more annoying than Canadian movies with Canadian casts pretending to be American. What’s that Sue Thomas tv show on global? You know the one with that deaf chick? Fuck off and stop pretending already. You’re not fooling anybody.

My overall point with this review is this: rent this movie, support Canadian cinema. It’s not something I would ever own. The title is clever but misleading – the movie is a cultural satire about a wily old Indian woman’s way of exploiting Canadian kindness and politeness to lift herself out of her station in life. It is sweet but predictable, safe and frugal in scope. It was filmed in Dehli, India, not that you get to actually see much of it. Biswas and Saran carry the load in this movie – they are by far the most interesting performances here.

I rate this 5 out of 10