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Full disclosure: I am not a Kevin Smith fan. There's no denying the charm of Clerks (Hell, even Clerks II) and one should underestimate Mallrats at her/his own peril, but aside from a couple standouts, Smith's is a cinema of pointless, rambling pretense for me: His movies have the look and feel of real-dude comedy, but that sheen is skin-deep at best.

That being said, the one thing Smith has going for him is his unique voice, one that does not apply to Cop Out, the first film the director has helmed that doesn't follow a screenplay of his own design. Originally monikered A Couple of Dicks (talk about a waaay better title), this buddy comedy is dull, paint-by-numbers cliche from start to finish. Smith devotees might be able to catch a whiff of their beloved oversized comedy maven in a number of scenes, but Cop Out is heavy on the stoopid and light on the whimsy - and that's the least of its problems.

The basis of Cop Out is Bruce Willis' desire to retrieve a stolen baseball card of his - a 1952 Andy Pafko - whose sales proceeds were going to pay for Willis' daughter's wedding (awwww....). So Willis, a cop, tells his partner (Tracy Morgan) to pony up, and the two grab the card-snatcher (Sean William Scott), and things go wrong. Does this sound like the Columbo version of Dude, Where's My Car?? Well, it's supposed to.

Cop Out has Tracy Morgan in it, so for every ten stupid-isms that dude emits, there's at least one that will trigger a guffaw (any scene featuring Morgan and a bowl of chips gets a thumbs-up from me), but these occasional glimpses of earnest humor aren't enough to keep this turkey afloat. Watching the film with Maximum Comedy Mode is far more exciting: This BD-exclusive bonus allows Smith the opportunity to explain the methods of his madness in Cop Out, and while he doesn't always succeed, it speaks volumes that Smith talking about his movie is leaps and bounds more entertaining than the film itself.

If you rent Cop Out, do yourself a favor - put on the Maximum Comedy Mode from the get-go. It'll dull the pain.

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