I must preface this blog with a confession. I am a huge fan of Kevin Smith’s. I’ve been to his live Q&A, read the book, bought the DVDs and seen all of his films... even Jersey Girl, which I liked. When I was in the first year of university my next-door neighbour in halls, Russell, introduced to me to one his favourite films at the time: Clerks. I’d never heard of it but watched it and loved it. A debut, self-financed film made on a shoe-string budget that has deservedly become a cult classic. I then quickly consumed the other films of his at the time, Mallrats and Chasing Amy. I’ve been a fan ever since.

For those who don’t know, Cop Out was the first film he directed that was not written by him. You could say he did it for the pay cheque and who are we to criticise that? I’m sure that money enabled to go off and do some other projects closer to his heart such as Red State. The reason for writing about this is that I finally got to see the film on Sky at the weekend. I approached with some indifference as it had received relatively poor reviews despite a decent box office for Warner Bros.

Being a fan of Smith, Bruce Willis, Tracey Jordan and with nothing else to do on a Saturday morning I decided to give it a chance. It was terrible. And I mean 1*, no redeeming qualities, terrible. The main object of the film is to make you laugh, and in that it fails. It’s such a shame as with the actors available, and effectively aping the 80’s buddy cop genre it could have been half decent. This is not a criticism of Kevin Smith by the way. The direction was pretty perfunctory but by no means bad considering he is not renowned for action set-pieces. Willis phones in a performance and Jordan is nowhere near as funny at 30 Rock (must be the quality of the writing on that show).

Basically, in case it hasn’t come through so far, avoid this film. As I said at the start I have no issue with Kevin Smith being a director for hire, I just question his choice this time around.

- Baydr