Cop and a Half: New Recruit | Film review - Lame buddy-cop sequel

Cop and a Half New Recruit Lou Diamond Phillips Lulu Wilson

(Image credit: Katie Yu)

One kid's fantasy. One cop's nightmare.

A luckless Lou Diamond Phillips takes on the Burt Reynolds role of the grumpy detective unwillingly saddled with a precocious kid as a partner in Cop and a Half: New Recruit, a redundant remake of 1993’s lame buddy-cop comedy. An old-school lawman who is clueless when it comes to modern tech (he still uses a flip-phone), he finds he needs the help of Lulu Wilson’s annoyingly eager 12-year-old pipsqueak to unmask the criminal mastermind behind a series of pranks designed to make the local police look silly. The gags are pretty feeble and the action flat, and Wilson (seen to much better effect in Annabelle: Creation) over-acts so much you fear her eyeballs will pop.

Certificate PG. Runtime 92 mins. Director Jonathan A Rosenbaum

Cop and a Half: New Recruit available on DVD & Digital from Universal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl6GQFnqiaQ

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.