by now you're seen the previews for Kevin Smith's newest film, the first he doesn't get writing credit for. Nothing about this looks good. Unless the studio cut the preview to look like the biggest piece of shit ever, it's going to suck. Is Kevin Smith just over or will this film be a monster hit and will it just turn Smith into the biggest hack director ever?

Haven't seen the previews. Either that or I saw them, was disgusted, and immediately erased them from my memory.

All I can say is, hope this is based on his experiences getting kicked off airline flights for obesity.

I remember when I used to watch Kevin Smith films, yeah. I think this will be his third in a row I didn't bother with; nothing about it makes it look like anything beyond a standard-issue cop buddy comedy. The fact that this isn't even being promoted with Smith's name is perhaps the most telling thing of all.

wasn't this supposed to be called a couple of dicks. looks pretty awful.

I don't give a fuck. Tracy Morgan!

why is he flying on southwest? haven't you made some money kevin? go first-class on a real airline.

Oh, it'll be #1 first week out. When does horrible reviews keep people away from movies these days?

Yep.

Kevin Smith's style is heavily reliant on dense, wordy dialogue and actors being able to execute. It's debatable what exactly made this style obsolete. It could have been 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', which borrowed its structure from Christopher Guest films using improv-based lack of structure to achieve a scene's objective. Perhaps the string of movies with Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson/Luke Wilson/Will Ferrell had something to do with it. But when I saw 'The 40 Year Old Virgin', at that point it was clear that this style was not only here, but the dominant way of filming a comedy in the 00s.

When Smith tried to be a part of it with 'Zack and Miri' the heavy dialogue style just felt like Poison playing in a Seattle club in 1992.

i just think smith hasn't written a good movie in awhile. his style could still work just as well as it has in the past but there needs to be good characters and a good story like chasing amy. zach and miri fucking sucked, the writing tried way too hard to be funny and was so forced. it was probably the most vulgar foul mouthed movie ive ever seen and it was almost all overkill.

i think this cop movie could work, its a good premise for a smart & funny writer like smith. but the previews look like trash. the scene where morgan goes "hell no! no no no no no......!" made me uncomfortable with how embarrassingly unfunny it was when i saw the preview in the theater. people who watch 30 rock say morgan is funny but from what i've seen of him he sucks shithole. the movie would've had more potential if willis and sean williams scott were the cops or if they could've landed chris rock in the role.

I haven't seen Clerks/Mallrats/Chasing Amy in a long time. Do they age well at all? I'd hypothesize that they come off dated and pretentious.

Last time I watched some older Kevin Smith films, Clerks was the only one that really held up. Still funny as hell. As for his later work, I didn't mind Zack and Miri, but I don't ever need to see it again. And I'd completely forgotten he'd done that Clerks sequel a few years back. What a forgettable film that was.

For some reason people are acting like Smith not writing Cop Out is a good thing because it's Smith trying something new, but I'm pretty sure Smith trying something new is a bad thing. I remember when Jersey Girl came out, Smith was rhapsodizing about Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography and how it's the best looking film he's made. Sure, Zsigmond is a great cinematographer, but the film looked like crap. It was just professional gloss signifying nothing. Critics have always made a big deal about Smith's lack of directorial skills and Smith, perhaps in an attempt to undercut the criticism, has totally bought into it. But Clerks and Chasing Amy are directed just fine. It's when Smith tries to look like a studio professional that he falls flat on his face.

Smith seems to have misinterpreted what actually made his earlier films any good, and has always overemphasized the importance of Jay and Silent Bob and dick and fart jokes. In fact that was the kind of material that dragged his work down. The "37 dicks" joke in Clerks is funny, but I can't think of a single fart joke in his films that was any good. The scatological shit in his films is always the most cringeworthy shit. The shit demon in Dogma for example or any time Jay farts. Jay and Silent Bob were never terribly funny and the more they showed up in his early films the worse they got. The "wacky" hijinks in Mallrats are terrible and large swathes of Dogma are unwatchable. Do people really laugh more at them than Dante and Randall? Or Jason Lee?

I guess I just like Kevin Smith, because I've pretty much enjoyed all of his films on some level (although Jersey Girl was kind of just bland). Yes his dialogue may sound "forced," but that's because he writes every character, even women, like he talks. The same can be said about Woody Allen. Even when he's not in the film, the male lead is almost always a nebbish, who lives in a world comprised solely of mahattan socialites, artists, jazz, and no blacks. These are the worlds these directors live in.

Now it may not seem like their dialogue is good from a screenwriting/realism level...but I certainly enjoy it on an auteur level. It seems like fewer and fewer directors nowadays pursue their own visions. Everything is an adaptation or a re-telling. I really appreciate that Smith has created his own viewaskew-niverse (or whatever he calls it), and I get to visit it every now and then.

And for those that didn't like Zack and Miri, I'd recommend giving it a second try. I really didn't like it the first time around, but I gave it another shot and re-watched it with my wife...and we both loved it. I actually think it's best enjoyed as a date movie (but I'll agree that the shit scene was unfunny and unnecessary).

I don't find myself "wanting" to revisit any of Smith's films despite my undying love of his work. I love Clerks and probably revisit that one more than any of his other work. I still feel that Mallrats is way better than anyone ever gave it credit for. Chasing Amy is a bit clunky and I now realize that most of the fault falls on Ben Affleck, who I liked in the role at the time. Dogma has a lot of good, but should have been scaled down. In that role, Affleck worked well. Jay & Silent Bob was fun, but rather forgettable over time. Jersey Girl is an abomination. A really boring film that never got its tone right. Clerks 2 was a waste despite being amusing at times. Zack & Miri had some of the energy of his original work, but I felt like the love between the two main characters felt forced and bogged down the final third.

Cop Out? Man, there is almost nothing about this that looks appealing. The fact that he didn't write it (or isn't credited) is more indication that it's probably shit. I like the guy a lot, he's really funny and his films entered my life at a crucial time (meaning they aligned with my age at the time), but I kind of think that, unless he changes his game in a significant way and can make it work (unlike with Jersey Girl) he's pretty much irrelevant.

I've always thought Clerks was kinda overrated. It's funny...but...eh...I dunno. I've always been annoyed by Dante, which seeing as how he's the main character that's kind of a problem. The thing with Kevin Smith for me is that I feel like he's too known and as a result too reliant on being "dirty" or "shocking" or whatever...and those tend to be the parts of the movies where, for me, he loses me. And it goes right to the beginning with Clerks and the girl fucking a dead guy. Even in 8th grade when all my friends were cracking up at that I was thinking "uh...really?"

Having said that, I own the 10th anniversary version and watch it on occasion. It's alright. I just don't think it's "great". I also like Dogma and for sorta sentimental reasons Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Around 2002 I lived in an apartment with two friends of mine and we had no cable or anything, just about 6 DVDs...and that was one of them. So, it got watched quite a bit.


I've watched Clerks 2 about three times in an attempt to like it, but I don't. It's pretty much focusing on all the things that I don't think are good about the first one, and when it does try the things that I did like (like the debates about Star Wars and independent contractors) it comes off forced. Like the Lord of the Rings vs Star Wars debate.

Zack and Miri I thought was alright for the first half hour or so, but then by the time they got into actually making the porno it lost me. Again, it was just trying too hard and focusing too much on being vulgar.


Actually thinking about it now, I think I'm more of a fan of his DVD commentaries and An Evening With Kevin Smith than I am of his actual movies.

I'm of the mind that the best things Smith has ever done is the Roadside Attractions segments on The Tonight Show.

Parts 1-4 (For some reason, embedding is disabled)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVaaJEiAGg0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maCdUldRoDE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfuWcHh71Gs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD4pfHysh6g

It's basically Smith driving around to various weirdo roadside attractions like the World's Smallest Church and a gator farm and being a wiseass and annoying everyone good enough to let him film there. Because it's the Leno show, the lewdness (I sound like an old man) is kept to a minimum, allowing Smith to focus on what he does best, act annoying and make fun of himself. Also, I don't think he talks about how hot his wife is once (By FAR, the most annoying trait he's picked up over the years)!


If i were to rank his stuff, it would be something like

1a. Clerks
1b. Clerks: The Animated Series (Which is crazy good and seems like the forerunner to Family Guy, but funnier. Also Charles Barkley guested on almost every episode)
2. Chasing Amy
3. Mallrats
4. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Revelled in its complete brain-deadeness)
5. Jersey Girl (Which wasn't THAT bad, just a little on the sappy side, and the DVD contains the aforementioned 'Roadside Attractions', so it can't be all bad)
6. Dogma (Which I sorta enjoyed at the time but never want to watch again. Alanis Morisette as God? And she's mentally handicapped?)

Once, he made Clerks 2, I pretty much gave up on Smith. I tried to watch Zack and Miri, lasted ten minutes and went "Isn't this just Randall arguing with the black guy from Chasing Amy? Dammit Kevin, come up with some new character archetypes already!"

don't forget about the flying car!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsFfBB2W7IA


The original screenplay of Cop Out was on the Black List. For those that don't know...scripts get passed around to agents, and once a year agents vote on what their favorite unproduced screenplays floating around hollywood are. In 2007 the winner was Recount (the HBO movie), and there were mentions for: Adventureland, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Zombieland, The Hangover, etc. Also some still unreleased screenplays by Alex Garland, John Logan, John Hodgman, Craig Brewer, Richard Price, etc.

Basically it's a pretty good sign that the script should be good.

I like the no, no, no, knock knock joke thing, but that seems like something not in the script, but ad libbed by Morgan.

that's good company ... what's gonna suck is if the film's actually great and WB f'd it over by putting out horrible previews and mishandling the ad campaign.

me too. i'll probably hate the film but plan on renting it anyways.

It seems like there's a great potential sub thread here. What entertainment figure has done the most with the least over the last double decades or so? I nominate 'Smith. He's famous because Clerks was the right movie at the exact right moment. It gave one the comfortable illusion of being an art fag without the tedious sometimes lonesome reality of actually being one. In short, it's the cinematic equivalent of a nose ring. The ring's long since been taken out and the hole's grown shut. Also, Clerks II is superior to the original it even ends with a much better Soul Asylum song, it just doesn't benefit as much from the vaseline smeared lens of nostalgia.

He's a fat fuck who has no business flying on planes

The great thing about liking Kevin Smith is I only have to see this movie if I decide I'm interested, knowing I will hear and learn everything I have any desire to from Kevin Smith, Cultural Phenomenon (pat. pend.) If CopOut is a failure in every way, he'll dissect it on SMODcast, his almost-sorta-kinda-nearly-every-week podcast with longtime producer Scott Mosier. If it's a massive hit, I'll hear about it there, as well. Or whichever bizarre aspects of success/failure interest him enough to elicit an hour+ of tirade. If I were interested, I could also learn about it from either of his two related web destinations, quickstopentertainment.com and http://viewaskew.com/theboard/; follow him on Twitter; wait for him to do a speaking gig near me; and/or his newest book, and have an equally good chance of learning far more than I needed to know.

While I tend to agree with those who think scatology is his weakest link, I also tend to think it's pointless fretting. Smith is a populist phenomenon as much as Howard Stern or Adam Carolla, both of whom attract a certain segment of audience which wrinkles its nose at the troglodytic Great Unwashed who make them all popular and wealthy men. Lunkheads enjoy all three of these men, and people like me and a few others in this thread will always enjoy them, as well, though we'll wring our hands and shake our heads and cluck over said lunkheads. The best I can hope for is that Smith will continue to find the balance between lunkhead-inspired scatology and the smarter humor which keeps me following him. He doesn't always succeed onscreen, though none of his movies offend me anywhere near as much as some of you, who seemingly exist to be aesthetically offended, a proposition so absurd I half wonder if you aren't at least as lazy as you are educated.

I like Smith. I like most of his movies, including the dread Jersey Girl, which seems hated as much b/c people are "supposed" to hate it as because of any great failing in the movie, itself. Clerks II is definitely funnier and yet also somehow weaker than its source. I assume I'll find something enjoyable about Zack and Miri, as well, if I ever get around to seeing it. And yeah, CopOut looks awful in every way - no plans on seeing it anytime soon. Even if it somehow got awesome reviews, a cop/buddy picture with Morgan and Willis isn't gonna get a prominent place on my dance card.

The only thing that surprises me about Smith is that anyone on this board is able to praise him at all without feeling coated in filth. Our taste guardians here make it quite clear we must suffer some horrible, disfiguring flaw for thinking on our own. In the spirit of intellectual curiosity, I appreciate their well-reasoned disdain. In the spirit of being an easily-bought also-ran, however, I wish they'd reconcile with the cruel fate which renders them likely to remain blowjob-free for life and find somewhere else to hold their ceaseless good-taste circle jerk.

Ebert hates it and so does Time Out Chicago.

16% on Rotten Tomatoes (19 reviews at this writing) and Marshall Fine of the Huffington Post hates it, too.

Pretty damning review considering he liked or really liked all of Smith's previous work save for Mallrats.

"If you combine the enthusiasms of a geek with the toilet humor of a third grader, you'll be pretty close to defining the art of Kevin Smith."

"With his clueless cop, Tracy Morgan is forced to go way over the top; Bruce Willis seems eager to have a long, sad talk with his agent, and Kevin Pollak, who gets co-star billing, does at least appear for longer than a quark at Fermilab."

"Years ago, at St. Joseph's Boys' Camp, there was this Chicago kid named Bob Calvano who was naturally hilarious around the campfire every night. Then I'd get up and flop with my memorized bits from Buddy Hackett records. 'Ebert,' he advised me kindly, 'it isn't funny if you act like it's supposed to be funny. Act like you don't know.' All I can do is pass along Calvano's advice. "

So much for that black list of unproduced scripts, lol.

Yeah, the movie we all thought would suck apparently does. What an enormous surprise - let's all whoop it up as if being right about something a block of wood could have called were the same as vindication.

Can't wait for the hand wringing and hair pulling when his latest movie's suck-age utterly fails to make Smith go away. That is the subtext here, right? That Kevin Smith offends our holy taste and needs to skulk off where we can just pretend he never existed?

Wise men of taste - thank the gods we have you to protect us from forming our own, unschooled opinions!

Astounding considering his previous films showed his talent to be strictly verbal. I'd be more interested in a script of his directed by someone else.

Not at all. As I've said, I enjoyed his last film, and have enjoyed his films in the past, and mostly enjoy the dude's comedy (Evening With Kevin Smith and such). This film just seemed like an especially poor performance from Smith, and so it appears to be.

Indeed. His Dogma script was very good. The problem was the execution.

On his Twitter regarding Cop Out, he responded to "Wait a minute, it's your movie and you can't even announce the title" with "Not MY movie; a movie I was hired to direct." So maybe he's just hoping for a hit so he can get some other projects going.

That's exactly what he's hoping for, I don't have the actual quote but he said something like he wants to pull a Soderbergh and make movies for Hollywood to fund his own personal projects.

I'm kind of excited for the hockey movie he keeps talking about, I think if he makes a movie about something he's really passionate about he could pull out of this slump. That and I really like hockey.

He's bailing out fast.

Recently Smith's Twitter page background was the poster for Cop Out.
Now he's changed it to a picture of him and some woman (his wife?).

that's his wife - but the photograph is them attending a premiere of the movie (the film's poster is in the background).

and to: Kiss the Floor - I've been a fan of Smith's since the beginning. Has my liking of him waned a bit over the last several years? Yes. Do I wish for him to be allowed to continue making films he's passionate about? Yes.

But I will call someone out for pandering even if I like their work. And Smith is pandering with this film. I don't care if he admits it or not, it doesn't mean he shouldn't be chided for it.

i remember getting so excited when i read the script for dogma, way back in the day. i was so excited to see the movie, months later, especially considering that he filmed it in my town. and then me and my father went to see it opening weekend (i was still below the age restricted limit) and i was just underwhelmed. having seen it at least once since, i've recognized all the ways in which smith failed his own vision. some things wouldn't age well anyhow, like the shit monster, but whatever tension the story contained was blown out gracelessly.

maybe, but buddy christ is timeless

Maybe Smith is using Hollywood as his "film school". Either way, I'm sure this one will make it to the cue.

Can't wait for the hockey movie.

Intrigued by whatever this hockey film may be. Reviews are pouring in and no one, I mean, no one likes this damn thing. It may be like The DaVinci Code and make $500 million. Critics have no clue what the public likes. Take it from a "critic". LoL.

Not sure it exists. The only film project Smith mentions on SMODcast as upcoming is tentatively titled "Red State" - I do not know it to be about hockey.

Here it is courtesy NHL.com

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=518446

there's hope for Smith in that quote about Seann William Scott and that film.

word of mouth on Twitter - not just Kevin Smith fans - is very positive. Debut box office for Friday was almost $6 million. Never underestimate the American movie-going public is the lesson to be learned here, I suppose.

$18 million opening weekend.

I actually really liked the whole "buddy cop" dynamic going on between Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis. They had some good dialog. And you can add stiffler to that same opinion, but EVERY OTHER THING in the movie was dreadful bad. And not in a Mallrats, still lovable kind of way either. The bad guys were just...I don't have the words for how bad they were.

I was reading a write-up and it talked about the scene where Morgan does his variety of impressions, and the reviewer said "Don't worry if you don't immediately get the references because Bruce Willis stands outside the room explaining what each one is afterwards" which sounds so impossibly bad on paper that I'll probably get around to watching the DVD to see just how bad it is.

it's a testament to bruce willis that it didn't come off as bad as it sounds on paper. Honestly, it wouldn't have been bad at all if they'd just let SOME of them go without a response. That part actually even feels a little out of place. It comes off like a weird office-style doc, where they were playing with editing and bruce willis is telling the story later about the bits morgan did.

saw it on opening day. Seann William Scott steals it every time he's on screen. when he's not, the energy drops and it just sputters along. i paid 6 dollars to see it and got 6 dollars of comedy in return. it all worked out in the end.

Is there a culture-clash radio scene, that's all I wanna know.

DrAfterShave nails it. I hit the 10:40am matinae for six bucks and got my money's worth on Tracy Morgan's funny alone. Bruce Willis is such a hack and the bad guys totally stink out the joint, but Stiffler is a riot. Morgan gives a little rant about poop that had people laughing like crazy.

Great movie. Exactly what I want from a buddy cop flick, and not at all what I'd have expected from Kevin Smith.

Best thing Smith has done in years.

Morgan was fantastic throughout. Bruce Willis did a perfectly fine job of being Bruce Willis, which was all I expected. I had no problem with the rival cops and the police chief whose characters were completely essential to the plot, giving those renegade loose cannon hotshots a hard time. Stiffler, of course, was joyous. Most I've enjoyed his presence in a long time.

Best thing Smith could do for his "credibility" or whatever, is to stay away from this awesome shit. Too good for that crowd.