Tag: buddy cop
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Grading the Franchise: Lethal Weapon
Grading the Franchise is a recurring feature at Cinecaps Digest where I review an entire film series. Today, it’s the buddy cop action-comedy Lethal Weapon series. Among straight examples of the buddy cop sub-genre, Lethal Weapon sits in the highest class. The series’ best films (the original and first sequel) are as good as any other…
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The Buddy System (or, Formula Living Through Odd Couple Chemistry) Review Batch (Part 2): Alien Nation, Armed and Dangerous, Bright, Collision Course, Dead Heat, Feds, Frisco Kid, Hot Pursuit, Loose Cannons, Man, Ride Along, Theodore Rex, Turner & Hooch
You didn’t think we were done, did you? I can’t just do one batch of reviews for buddy action-comedies and leave it at that. It’s right there in the name of the sub-genre—it needs a buddy! This mismatched partner of the first buddy action-comedy post is bringing up the rear in a second look at…
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The Buddy System (or, Formula Living Through Odd Couple Chemistry) Review Batch (Part 1): Air America, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Bulletproof, Busting, Downtown, Freebie and the Bean, Guard, Heat, Let’s Be Cops, National Security, Other Guys, Protector, Rundown, 2 Guns
The storytelling device of police partners going after bad guys goes back a long, long ways. So, too, does the idea of a mismatched “odd couple” working together, reluctantly or otherwise. Fusing the two into a formula had some prototypical development in the 60s and 70s, but finally came into its own with 48 Hrs.…
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Two-fer Review Batch (Part 1): Babe, Babe Pig in the City, City Slickers, City Slickers II The Legend of Curly’s Gold, Gremlins, Gremlins 2 The New Batch, Stakeout, Another Stakeout, Young Guns, Young Guns II
The Cinecaps Digest recurring feature of Grading the Franchise doesn’t have too many “rules,” but one of them is that I don’t really consider it a movie franchise unless there are at least three entries (which may include a spinoff or reboot, though that’s a case-by-case basis). This leaves a lot of film properties in…