Let’s Be Cops is a comedy that never gets all that arresting

MOVIE review: The new B-grade buddy comedy Let’s Be Cops progresses steadily through three distinct phases.

Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr in Let’s Be Cops. Picture: Supplied

The first can be labelled Hey, This Is Kinda Funny. This one lasts about 20 minutes or so.

Then comes Umm, This Is Not So Funny Any More. This takes you just north of the one-hour mark.

The rest of the movie? File under Geez, Hurry Up and Finish Already. This wait for the closing credits will take a seeming eternity.

The leading roles here have been handed to mid-strength American comics Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr, best known to Australian viewers as two of the interchangeable dudes from the hit TV series The New Girl.

This pair do have an obvious rapport, and it is this factor alone that earns Let’s Be Cops a pass mark for a fairly amusing opening act.

Johnson and Wayans play Ryan and Justin, two lifelong losers who think they have happened upon a winning idea.

The radical concept that will earn them the women and the respect yet to come their way?

Ryan and Justin will pretend to be LAPD officers.

Just how this dim duo initially gets away with it supplies Let’s Be Cops with most of its laughs.

The uniforms are a cinch. So too is acquiring a police car.

Ryan (Jake Johnson) acquires a police car in a scene from Let’s Be Cops. Picture: Supplied

There’s a stack of ’em on eBay, apparently.

Fake pistols and real Tasers are not that difficult to find, either. And why waste a few years in a police academy when there’s a zillion How-To videos on YouTube?

Once Ryan and Justin have explored all the possibilities of pretend policing — telling people to freeze, impounding illicit substances for their own use, and so on — the boys make the mistake of taking the ruse too far.

Soon, they look like being the next casualties in a turf war being waged by ferocious foreign mobsters.

After a fairly solid start, Let’s Be Cops melts down into a sludge of sub-Sandler-esque shenanigans that slows the flow of laughs to a trickle.

Worse still, a mean streak starts to show where women, gays and ethnic minorities are run down for a cheap and nasty chuckle. Let’s be looking for something else to do, huh?

Ryan (Jake Johnson) and Justin (Damon Wayans Jr) heard to a bar dressed as LAPD officers. Picture: Supplied

> LET’S BE COPS [MA15+]

Rating: 2/5

Director: Luke Greenfield (The Animal)

Starring: Jake Johnson, Damon Wayans Jr, Nina Dobrev, Rob Riggle, Andy Garcia

“May the force be elsewhere”

Originally published as Let’s Be Cops is a comedy that never gets all that arresting