1/2 star

In this rote faux-buddy-cop, er, comedy, Martin Lawrence is Earl Montgomery, an obnoxious Police-Academy-dropout-turned-low-rent-security-guard who ruins the life of hapless LAPD officer Hank Rafferty (Steve Zahn) when Rafferty comes upon him trying to retrieve his keys locked inside his car. A bee happens by, swatting ensues, a passerby wields a video camera, and the white-cop-black-motorist trope is milked for toothless laffs. It could've been maybe a little bit funny if didn't pounce on obvious, class of 1992 Racism 101 jokes, a problem that marks the whole film. When Rafferty emerges from prison jobless, he becomes a rent-a-cop and finds himself, courtesy of a lame backstory involving a vendetta against some cop killers, partnered up with Montgomery for some car-chasin', bad guy-hunting vigilante justice. Sadly, Lawrence's tag line-spouting buffoon ("What the problem is!?") is as painfully annoying as any number of Jim Carrey characters, with only moments of the face-tugging goofiness that makes Carrey hilarious. Zahn, meanwhile, is likably amusing as the put-upon nice guy struggling to hold onto his composure in a series of extreme, hard-to-swallow misunderstandings. Racial politics will always be ripe for satire, but Adam Sandler flick vet Dennis Dugan's predictable, thin-plotted lark reads as little more than a black guy-white guy Three's Company.

— Jessica Letkemann