Bad Cop: COFFEE & KAREEM

I know a bad movie is the least of anyone’s problems these days. It’s even less of a problem, in fact, now that new releases are confined to streaming where ending your misery in a bad choice of a movie is as easy as clicking away or smashing that fast forward button. This weekend, Netflix has served up Coffee & Kareem, a truly execrable cop action comedy. That it’s directed by Michael Dowse, whose similar mismatched buddy actioner Stuber flopped hard in wide release last summer, makes it an even more apt reflection of the state of current cinema. At least Stuber was filled with charming personalities, sending Kumail Nanjiani as a hapless Uber driver criss-crossing town with Dave Bautista as a growling cop who must desperately catch a criminal despite just having laser eye surgery. It’s not great, but it has all the good bones of a Hollywood action comedy: decent action sequences, fine bantering chemistry, and agreeable supporting turns by fun character actors. It gets the job done, and fit the big screen well. Even though it was a good time at the movies, exactly what was advertised on the tin, it’s apparently the kind of movie audiences don’t really see anymore, at least not in the numbers that justify a full theatrical release. So here we are, firing up the latest Netflix Original and finding once again that they’re just not up to par. The good original movies they produce or purchase — from the auteur efforts to the rare enjoyable B-pictures — are the outliers.

This new one is just dire. At first I was willing to give Coffee & Kareem points for a punny title. It introduces a mild-mannered Detroit police officer (Ed Helms) whose girlfriend (Taraji P. Henson) has a profane, standoffish tween son named Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh). So it’s like a cop comedy. So: cops like donuts. Donuts and coffee. Coffee and cream. Coffee and Kareem. Ha. Kinda cute. But then we see the badge. He’s officer Coffee. That’s his name. Okay. We’re pushing it. So the movie’s a bit full of its own tricks. But then the cavalcade of nastiness begins, with thinly sketched caricatures and cliches veering quickly into a loud shuffle of stereotypes across every scene. There are motormouthed precocious vulgar inner city school kids, swaggeringly stupid gangsters, a mother who is as often a prop as not, and a gruff chief with transparently maniacal crooked cops. There are cluttered action scenes and flippant gun violence interspersed with constant references to police shootings and irreverent joshing about race (or, failing that, child abuse) that spins back in retrograde essentialism. It never transcends the tropes and assumptions baked into something so stumblebum about its content. Some of the performers are doing what they can with this material. Betty Gilpin, for one, is spinning something like interesting out of a mediocre script for the second time in just a few weeks — it makes The Hunt look better by comparison. The picture is badly calibrated from the first scenes, like an early one in which Kareem talks about his member while eating candy on the toilet in a public restroom, then a scene later he describes which acts he’d like to perform. The whole thing’s just sad when it's not unpleasant. It’s pitched at a high level of annoyance, with grating performances and the kind of flop sweat second hand embarrassment that settles in as you see actors flailing in a movie that’s giving them less than nothing for their efforts. It may be a throwback to 80’s action comedies, though it can’t muster their aesthetic or narrative or comedic appeal, and only has the ugly attitudes down pat. It’s not entertaining; it’s depressing. Rent Stuber instead.