A Couple of Dicks/Cop Out Script Review

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in "Cop Out"

Recently the trailer was released for the new Kevin Smith movie, “Cop Out” – the first movie he’s directed from a script that he didn’t write himself. The script was the heavily lauded Black List 2008 script, “A Couple of Dicks” by brothers Mark and Robb Cullen. The two writers are veterans of television, such shows as “Las Vegas” and “Heist”. “A Couple of Dicks” appears to be their quirky homage to the buddy cop comedies like “Lethal Weapon” that dominated the late ’80s and early ’90s.  Is it as a good as those movies? Yes and no.

The movie follows two bickering police partners – Jimmy, the level-headed leader (Bruce Willis) and his neurotic partner Paul (Tracy Morgan) – who go on the case in contemporary LA to find Jimmy’s stolen vintage baseball card which he was planning to use to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Along the way, they tangle with Mexican gang violence and uncover a kidnapping that puts them in danger.

The script is more than an homage to the buddy cop genre, it firmly plants itself in it. As a comedy, it has a few laugh-out-loud moments, but for the most part, the script plays everything pretty straight. This was disappointing to me as a reader, because I was hoping that Paul’s character would show some of the absurdity that has elevated Tracy Morgan to legend status on “30 Rock”. As comedies go, it’s a pretty mainstream, average one.

The storyline is a bit better than the comedic dialogue, and surprising moves pretty quickly. The action scenes should be fact-paced and exciting on the big screen and were the high-points of the script. The biggest problem with the script were two plot points that seemed out of left field and soured the story for me as the reader. One involves the sudden death of a character that I really liked in the story (I won’t say who it is, but it isn’t one of the two main characters), and secondly the crux of the entire plot. The script doesn’t really wrap up that nicely and if it makes it into the movie, I predict that the audience will feel a bit cheated. Again, no spoilers, but it seems like the entire film is thrown out the window in the last ten pages.

That said, the relationship between Paul and Jimmy is really the strength of this movie, and with Willis and Morgan in the roles, I can see them making this movie working. I don’t expect Smith to have much influence over this movie, if the trailer is to be believed (it follows the script completely), he is merely the studio’s hired gun. All in all, a pretty strong feature debut for the Cullen brothers, and I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Status: Currently in Postproduction under director Kevin Smith and starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Set to be released February 26, 2010. The title has been changed by the studio from “A Couple of Dicks” to “Cop Out” and the setting has been changed from Los Angeles to New York City.

Final Score (6.5 out of 10)

Your Highness Script Review

Natalie Portman in "Your Highness"

“Your Highness” should be a great script. I mean it’s written by Danny McBride and Ben Best, the two writers behind McBride’s very, very funny star vehicles: “The Foot Fist Way” and “Eastbound & Down” (which both qualify as high points of comedy in the last few years). “Your Highness” is their next project and McBride’s next starring vehicle and the premise is ripe for comedy – basically Danny McBride playing his stoner, douchy character from everyone else, but set in Medieval times. McBride is Thaddeous, a wimpy, lazy prince who is forced to go on a quest for the “Hoop of Doom,” and in the process he falls in love with a warrior princess, fights trolls, and generally makes fun of the entire premise.

Let me preface this by saying, the draft I read doesn’t really line up with the released information about the movie– in this earlier draft, the character of his brother, Fabious (played in the film by James Franco) doesn’t go on the quest with him and is generally a secondary character. Released plot information places the film as a buddy comedy between the two actors, so who knows how much of what I read is in the film itself.

Let’s just hope I’m right, and this script is not what we’ll see on the screen next year.

The film is a raunchy male comedy with lots of scatological humor and drug references. I can appreciate the satirical look at Medieval times and their portrayals in film, but it just doesn’t quite hit me as funny. The only way I could entertain myself while reading the script is if I imagined Thaddeous’s lines being spoken by McBride.  Otherwise they fall flat and unfunny.

The secondary problem with this script is the uneven blend of contemporary comedy and medieval language and customs. McBride and Best don’t quite know how much of a period piece they want this to be, and it often feels like they are winking at the reader and saying how clever they are. It gets annoying quickly, and I wish they had stuck to one tone for the entire script.  Instead of developing the characters and plot (which is pretty episodic), they just make joke after joke that don’t quite work in execution.  Hopefully the script has been tightened and improved, and surely under the direction of David Gordon Green (“Pineapple Express” and “Eastbound & Down”), the film found its footing through the course of improvisation and timing.

I still have high hopes for this movie.  However, the premise and talent involved should be better than what I read in this script.

Status: Currently in Post-Production, directed by David Gordon Green and Starring Danny McBride, James Franco, and Natalie Portman. Set for release October 1, 2010.

Final Score (4 out of 10)

The Social Network Script Review (Black List #2)

Aaron Sorkin Photo Credit: AP

The next script on the 2009 Black List is a heavy-hitter: “The Social Network,” an adaptation of a book, “The Accidental Billionaires” about the founding of the social networking site Facebook by Ben Mezrich. The source material is all based on truth and the book itself was a bestseller. And unlike “The Muppet Man,” this movie not only has a good chance of being made, it’s already in production for Columbia Pictures and being directed by David Fincher (“Fight Club,” “Seven,”…)

Did I mention the script was written by Aaron Sorkin? Yes, that Aaron Sorkin.

I told you this script was a heavy hitter.

Sorkin is easily one of the best, if not the best writer of intelligent dialogue in the business today.  Through his various television shows, the man has become the rare breed of screenwriter, the one that has name recognition. Basically him and Tarantino are the only ones who can get their names in light merely over a screenplay. So we know that Sorkin can write, but does it work in the “Social Network”?

Yes, very much so. By far one of the longest scripts I’ve ever read (it weighs in at 161 pages), it actually moves pretty briskly with the majority of the pages devoted to the kind of technical, yet understandable dialogue that Sorkin is known for. If there is any flaw with this script, it is that it has no discernible structure and evolves through many different phases of the story without warning.  This really isn’t a flaw in my opinion however, because Sorkin’s writing feels so immediate and involving that you are along for the ride all the way until the end of the story.

What is the story? To boil it down to the basics, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook while working with and for a couple of other people while at Harvard and they all got forced out when it went big. The story is for the most part a tragedy for all involved, as Zuckerberg’s arc through the story is very Shakespearean. Here is a man who wanted so badly to be accepted and loved that he created a website where he could be friends with everyone. Sorkin has captured a mad genius at work.

This movie works on many levels, and it is one of the funniest I’ve ever read. The script is modern and thrilling. I can’t wait to see the film in theaters when it premieres next year.

Final Score (9 out of 10)

Status: Currently in production under director David Fincher and starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake. Opens October 15, 2010.

Kick-Ass Script Review

Aaron Johnson as "Kick-Ass"

Instead of going straight for the next script on this year’s Black List, Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network,” I thought I might give you my thoughts on the script for what will most certainly be one of the most talked-about and popular movies of 2010.

That movie is Kick-Ass.

First, a digression.  With so many comic book movies in production and being released, it’s hard to tell the good ones from the bad ones these days.  Most of the comic movies being made have decent-to-great source material, so how do we two extremes such as The Dark Knight and Ghost Rider.  I think it’s probably the scripts themselves.  First, I think comic books, for the most part lend very well to film and television because a good comic book is edited images and words that create an emotional reaction – which is basically what good filmmaking is. However, because every film essentially needs a script, that visual medium must be translated first into a literary medium and then back into a visual medium. I think the script is really where a comic book movie’s success or failure really lays.  I recently read the unproduced script for Brian K. Vaughn’s “Y: The Last Man,” one of my favorite comic series. However, in the writer’s translation to screenplay, everything just sort of lay there flat for the reader. It had none of the action and momentum of the comic series on the written page.

Let’s just say Kick-Ass is one of those great comic book scripts. Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (who is also directing the movie), the film crackles with snappy dialogue, humor, comic book references, and lots of violent action.  Kick-Ass is about Dave Lizewski, a normal high school student who decides to become a superhero and promptly gets his “ass kicked” hence his superhero name. But it also about so much more than this – it’s about the crazy people who fight crime, the mob, family dynamics, high school, and romantic relationships.  It is basically everything a well-rounded movie should be.

And did I mention, it’s really really funny?

Not that Goldman and Vaughn should take all the credit for this great script (which is brief and moves fast at 105 pages), much of Mark Millar’s classic dialogue from the comic books is transplanted right into the action.  This is the first comic book script I’ve read that has taken the visual frames of the comic book and described them in a way that is almost equal to the source material. Told almost exclusively through Dave’s V.O., we have a thrilling action comedy on our hands here.  Don’t get me wrong, the film as scripted is a hard R, but for the male audience this will be incredibly popular if they stayed true to the script.  Folks, Kick-Ass will be the second BIG hit of the year (after Alice in Wonderland whose script I willreview shortly).

To use a phrase that will be popular in a few months: Kick-ass kicks ass.

Final Score (9 out of 10)

The Muppet Man Script Review (Black List #1)

The Muppet Man

Jim Henson with a few of his famous creations

It’s the script everyone’s talking about. Christopher Weekes’s big-time biopic of Jim Henson that topped this year’s black list.  Is it good, great, or awesome?

It’s all of the above. In that order.

The script itself has taken some heat because Weekes wrote it on spec without supposedly reading any books about Henson and using Wikipedia as a source.  In many ways, this makes sense when you read it – the historical parts of the script (basically Henson’s life) feel like Cliff Notes version of a great imaginative man who is being shortchanged.  And Weekes decides to go over everything in Henson’s career so the entire second act about Sesame Street and The Muppet Show seems rushed to say the least.  Henson deserves better.

With this major problem, why was the script so well praised in the Black List?  I’ll tell you.  The framing device of Henson’s last days that pervades the script is spot-on.  I’m not sure what the historical accuracy of these scenes are, but they do pack an emotional wallop.  And even though Henson’s life feels shortchanged, it seems like you get a good sense of a great man from his achievements and his actions in these last days.  When you hit the final 10-15 pages, the whole thing erupts in greatness.  If you don’t feel something, even from reading them, you need to reevaluate whether or not you have a soul.  I won’t ruin it, but let’s just say its a tear-jerker.

The most unusual part of Weekes’s script is the use of Muppets (mostly Kermit) to guide Henson in his last days.  Kermit the Frog, in the first 10 pages is overweight and drinking, not quite your usual treatment of a beloved character.  However, it works.  The surreal aspect of having the Muppets show up is Weekes’s best weapon in his arsenal, and best brings together who Henson truly was – a very imaginative and deeply troubled (if Weekes would have us believe) man.

All in all, a great script that will have a tough time getting produced – Disney would have to sign off for them to use the Muppets characters and Children’s Television Workshop, the Sesame Street characters – and with their portrayal it is a lose-lose situation for the film. Without them the movie falls apart and their portrayals don’t exactly fit the family standards of the two companies.  It’s a shame, because with the right Henson (I picture Tom Hanks killing it in this meaty role) and a great director with an eye for combining fantasy and reality (paging Michel Gondry) this would be a shoo-in for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Final Score (8 out of 10)