COPS & ROBBERSONS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Chevy Chase, Jack Palance, Diane Weist, Robert Davi,
David Barry Gray.
Screenplay: Bernie Somers.
Director: Michael Ritchie.
All right, I'll admit it: I'm guilty of a bias towards writers. Perhaps it's the part of me that identifies with them, or the romantic image of a guy alone in a room staring down a blank sheet of paper in a battered manual Smith-Corona until the paper blinks first. The fact is that when I feel a project has gone sour, the writer is frequently the last target of my wrath, and the first one to get the benefit of the doubt. Not this time. I can't think of a director alive who could have done anything with COPS & ROBBERSONS, or an actor who could have made it watchabel. To call this script inept would be to give it more credit than it deserves.
Chevy Chase stars as Norman Robberson, a suburban father of three whose family doesn't respect him at all. To compensate for his timidity in real life, Norman watches every T.V. cop show he can, memorizes police procedures and worships their heroics from afar. The chance to worship up close comes when a counterfeiter (Robert Davi) moves in next door, and the police decide to set up a stakeout in the Robbersons' home. The veteran in the stakeout team is Jake Stone (Jack Palance), a growling tough guy who immediately commands everyone's respect. Meanwhile, Norman gets caught up in the action, and in his attempt to "help out" ends up jeopardizing the entire operation.
It is exceedingly difficult to imagine what Bernie Somers was thinking when he started putting this mess together. It often seems as though he never developed the idea beyond a single-sentence pitch--"cops move in with a loser who idolizes cops." There isn't a single original situation or character to be found, but that can be said of eight scripts out of ten that come out of Hollywood. The more telling point is that Somers didn't seem to have a clue where to go with this story. The predictable resolution would have been for milquetoast Norman to discover an inner reserve of strength and end up saving the day. But even that simplistic an answer seems to be beyond his grasp. Norman begins and ends the film exactly the same, and there isn't even a pat answer provided for why there is anything different in the way his family would treat him.
Then there are the other characterizations, which run from the stereotypical to the incomprehensible. Jason James Richter (FREE WILLY) as the rebellious son and Fay Masterson (THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE) as the teenage daughter are completely without personality, and Diane Weist is saddled with an unpleasant shrewishness. Robert Davi, who by now might as well have the word "villain" tattooed to his forehead, bounces from nasty to clownish as the counterfeiter. Among the creative stretches in the plot are the daughter falling for the hunky young cop (David Barry Gray) and the family ending up hostages. Please, my heart can't take any more surprises.
The biggest losers, however, are probably the two names above the title. Chase, as I've already noted, is stuck with a character who goes nowhere, dooming him from the start. Still, it would have been nice if he hadn't walked through the film as though he were still stunned by the cancellation of his talk show. He's not even as endearingly incompetent as the VACATION series' Clark Griswold, just deathly boring. Jack Palance doesn't fare much better, but he does have an innate gruff charm that transcends the role as written; however, that still doesn't explain why the Robbersons seem so instantly drawn to Jake despite his abusiveness, nor why Jake eventually reciprocates. If all you want is the chance to see Palance flare his nostrils and roll his own cigarettes, rent CITY SLICKERS again.
I laughed exactly twice during COPS & ROBBERSONS, once when Chase attempts to roll his own cigarette and once during a coda which plays on Palance's famous one-armed pushups. Even at bargain prices, that's two bucks a laugh. *That's* a crime.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 $ per laugh: 2.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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