“Cop Out” is half a parody of buddy cop movies, half a romantic comedy, full of dirty jokes and about 90% of it is awful. That’s all thanks to director Kevin Smith (“Clerks”, “Mallrats”), who can’t even keep his own fans happy with this one. It’s just astoundingly bad throughout.

“Cop Out” stars Bruce Willis (“The Sixth Sense”, “Die Hard”) and Tracy Morgan (“The Longest Yard”) as mismatched policemen Jimmy and Paul. Jimmy needs to pay for his daughter’s dream wedding and thus intends to sell a rare baseball card but after he’s mugged he find himself along with his partner caught in a situation featuring one of New York’s most notorious crime bosses.

Bruce Willis is an actor I have tremendous admiration for because he’s not just done action films but thrillers, horror, animation, comedies and sci-fis but “Cop Out” is definitely beneath him. Tracy Morgan is boring and even more annoying than Chris Tucker in the “Rush Hour” films. The worst character by far is an irritating burglar played by Seann William Scott (“Role Models”). The other characters are definitely unsatisfying. Kevin Smith is known for his punchy dialog but here, you almost feel like he must have been suffering from a case of amnesia.

“Cop Out” can’t even deliver as a parody as it takes a few wrong turns when reading the map. I even preferred “Loaded Weapon 1” (Willis has a cameo in that). “Cop Out” uses every cheap joke in the book while it uses basically a poor man’s equivalent of “Axel F” for background music. I saw Smith’s “Clerks” and you can take it or leave it in my books but compared to this, I definitely take “Clerks”. The film is all-round very cheap and just genuinely lacking in understanding of comedy but those who enjoy these dumb and dirty comedies might get a kick out of this. Let’s say a = good and b = bad, “Cop Out” is b³.