Metacritic reviews

At times, the movie seems to exist for no other purpose than to collide these two personalities together, privileging their antagonistic banter above all else. But isn’t that the basic point of all buddy comedies?

The mix of raucous buffoonery and violent mayhem isn’t exactly seamless, and the laugh-out-loud moments come with conspicuously less frequency during a third act that suggests a rough draft for “Bad Boys 3.”

This alleged comedy takes a long time before it gets its first laugh in. The first half is a complete slog and the ending is insulting, but there are a few semi-arresting sketch comedy moments.

With a combination of jokes that don't land and a constant flurry of exposition and plotting to keep these flimsy plates spinning, Let's Be Cops more often than not feels more like a court-ordered defensive-driving class than a rousing high-speed chase.

The movie relies too much on the same comic tension in each scene: Johnson is the gung-ho one, Wayans says no (a lot).

The film is confusingly and sloppily put together, edited down to the point that the few genuine jokes of Let’s Be Cops are given precious little time to breathe, before zipping into the next sequence of increasingly irrational events.

"What's the worst that could happen?" The answer to that is, you could end up in a summer comedy that's barely funny enough to warrant — ahem — release in the summer.

Despite a premise rife with potential dark humor, there’s too little edge in Let’s Be Cops. Director/co-writer Luke Greenfield chose wacky over witty and the result is a film with no sense of danger, no reason to care and not enough laughs to make the sitcomish handling of a strong premise forgivable.

The screenplay co-written by Nicholas Thomas and director Luke Greenfield fails to mine the potentially humorous premise for the necessary laughs, with nearly all of the gags falling thuddingly flat.

Let's Be Cops is a fine example of what happens when filmmakers rely too heavily on the potential chemistry of the cast, rather than giving actors something decent on the page to work with.