I have seen many Lloyd Kaufman films over the years. His Troma Team releases the kind of stuff mainstream film studios would never touch. Unfortunately, his independent movie spirit has spawned dozens of imitators who, armed with the germ of an idea, a couple of friends, and a camera, think they, too, can make a movie. This is what I suspect happened with "The Cops Did It," but the film isn't even up to Troma standards. Nick Barnes and Craig Chamberlin play a couple of racist, farting, criminal cops in Florida. They burn down the house of a couple of pot-smoking brothers, who decide to go interview their even stranger neighbors to get evidence to get one of the brothers out of jail. The cops try to stop them. That's about it.
Admittedly, the basic pitch of the film has potential written all over it. Who would believe a bunch of weed toking slackers? The weird neighbor angle also should have scored. I sat watching this- and it is way too long at an hour and forty-five minutes for the material they have, and just got sadder and sadder. Aside from the professional sounding music, I'm not sure writer/director/almost-everything-else Anthony Costagliola (as Anthony Azar) had a plan going in. The scenes that worked the most (I write "the most," since they wouldn't work in any other movie) are the ones featuring Kaufman, who always seems to be up for a foul-mouthed cameo no matter the subject matter. It's almost impossible to review this except to say the obvious- if Troma Team product is your thing, you'll love it. Troma Team product is not my thing.
"The Cops Did It" guns for the stupid-comedy audience, but it is so badly made, even they won't be forgiving.
