I was talking with a friend about Kevin Smith's Cop Out, a buddy-cop action-comedy starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, before its release last February. We seemed to agree that while we wanted it to be an enjoyable goof from one of our favorite comic filmmakers, it sure did look like the kind of terrible formulaic movie that we'd see a poster for on the wall of Morgan's dressing room on 30 Rock. "It'll be one or the other," I told him. Joke was on me. It's both.

Willis and Morgan are Jimmy and Paul, Brooklyn cops and partners for nine long years. When a bust goes awry, they're suspended without pay at the worst possible time--Jimmy's daughter (Michelle Trachtenberg) is about to have a very expensive wedding, and her smarmy stepdad (Jason Lee) would like nothing more than to pay the bill and humiliate Jimmy. He decides to sell his prize 1952 Andy Pafko baseball card in order to fund the nuptials, but that plan goes south when he's robbed by Dave (Seann William Scott). The partners track Dave down to get the card back, and end up fumbling their way into the drug-running activities of Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz), and just might get their jobs back by making a big bust.

The tried-and-true conventions of the genre--the racially mismatched partners, one of them a motor-mouthed loose cannon; the stripping of the guns and badges; the rivalry with other detectives; the stumbling into a big case with their breaking-all-the-rules shenanigans; etc.--have been wheezy for well over a decade now, and the screenplay by Robb and Mark Cullen isn't some sort of post-modern riff or parody. Director Smith instead plays it as an affectionate homage to the '80s action comedies he grew up on--it's the kind of movie that could easily play on a double-bill with Fletch (dig that closing music), Beverly Hills Cop, or Running Scared, right down to the synthy Harold Faltermeyer score.

Those films, even the best of them, were disposable entertainments--sheer popcorn. By attempting to replicate them and just make a casual action-comedy, it could be argued that Smith is wasting his considerable talent on a glossy copy of throwaway pictures^*. It's a credible argument, hampered only by the fact that, in spite of its derivative nature and frequently weak writing, Cop Out is a good-natured and genuinely likable movie. Some of the humor is strained, and the picture has trouble firing up its own engines in the opening scenes, but there are laughs to be had here--some of them from Morgan's over-the-top performance, some from Willis' unflappable (and finely-tuned) persona, some from Smith's infectious sense of a good time being had.

The film's misfortune is that it doesn't have a screenplay as smart as we've come to expect from Smith. The script, by TV writers Robb and Mark Cullen, is pretty dopey stuff, even by cop movie standards; it too often settles for cheap, easy vulgarity and lazy punch lines (even including, God forbid, a kid who kicks Morgan in the nuts). When Morgan and Willis, on a stakeout, discover that Dave enjoys, um, using the facilities when he's robbing a house, Morgan's long, dull riff about the power of his shits isn't funny, because it's the kind of material that expects us to think the mere mention of something scatological is funny in and of itself. It's not. Smith's screenplays (the good ones, at least), begin with the shit joke, and then take it somewhere unexpected. A scene like that (and similar ones scattered throughout Cop Out) leave us feeling like, mid-budget lark or not, the talented filmmaker is playing below his abilities.

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For a good long while, the biggest knock against Smith as a filmmaker was for his perceived lack of visual style. But he's been making smooth, good-looking films since 2001's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and longtime D.P. Dave Klein eagerly embraces the slick 80s action movie aesthetic. The 1080p VC-1 encode is sleek and film-like, but with enough grain and texture to capture the grit of the film's Brooklyn and Queens locations. Some of the nighttime scenes get a touch soft, and occasional interior scenes are somewhat flat. But color saturation is bright and attractive, details are tight and nicely rendered, and the overall visual presentation is workmanlike if not dazzling.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is heavy on wisecracking dialogue, but the occasional chases and shoot-outs give the surround and LFE channels a chance to muscle up. Separation is occasionally weak, but the mixture of dialogue, effects, and Faltermeyer's kicky score is, for the most part, clean and well-modulated.

French, Spanish, and Portuguese 5.1 tracks are also available, as are English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles.

Kevin Smith is known for taking full advantage of the possibilities of bonus features; since his first films were released on laserdisc, he's stuffed his titles with commentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes, and behind-the-scenes documentaries (often running as long or longer than the feature), frequently seeking to demystify the filmmaking process. So it's not surprising that he's a perfect match for their "Maximum Movie Mode" (here retitled "Maximum Comedy Mode" ), which allows him to combine all of those bonus elements into one smooth, fun package.

Smith is clearly having a blast, doing on-camera and voice-over commentary (and telling some great stories--the Willis "You don't know your lenses?!?" bit is priceless), bringing in a PA, popping up in the frame and marveling at the technology ("Isn't that amazing? Blu-ray magic!"), even popping up in a second frame to criticize his own long-windedness. He uses a red cop car "gumball" on the left side of the screen to stop the film for deleted scenes, and a blue "gumball" on the right for outtakes and alternate punch lines. The screen is split for behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and storyboards, trivia pops up as on-screen text, and the viewer can stop the program entirely for brief "Focus Point" featurettes. Seann William Scott also pitches in, with occasional pop-ups called "Wisdom from the Shit Monster"; their debt to "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" is pretty obvious, but they're still mildly amusing.

Overall, the "Maximum Comedy Mode" is a terrific addition--it actually enriches the film and adds scores of laughs, and though it's certainly a longer way to watch the movie (the whole thing clocks in at 175 minutes), it's a recommended method for return visits.

The disc is also BD-Live enabled and comes with a second disc that includes both a standard-def DVD version and a digital copy for viewing on portable devices.

Cop Out marks Smith's first time directing a film he didn't write, and some will find that perplexing--he was always a writer first, and the first to cut down his skill at staging scenes and moving the camera. But it's a well-made, good-looking picture, and his shoot-outs and chase scenes are smoothly, professionally handled. There are complaints to be registered, but they're all intellectual ones; from the standpoint of goofy fun (which is all they're going for anyway), Smith and crew mostly bring it off.

Jason lives in New York. He holds an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from NYU.