Cops and Robbersons

Chevy Chase is going through a rough spell. His short-lived talk show played like a nationally televised nervous breakdown. In his new comedy, Cops and Robbersons, Chase performs as if he were a shell-shocked vet skirting a catatonic state. The film isn’t very good, but Chase is even worse. His snotty energy appears to be gone, and even his pratfalls are limp and lifeless.

Not that he has much to work with in Cops and Robbersons. He plays a suburban drudge whose only interest in life is TV cop shows. He has less than a vague understanding of his own family, but he knows every episode of Police Woman by heart. No wonder he can’t wait to cooperate when the cops ask to use his house for a stakeout.

Chase’s new neighbor (Robert Davi) is a big-time counterfeiter and money-launderer whose work is in hot demand, despite his nasty habit of blowing up his clients. Jack Palance plays a surly copper out of the Stone Age whose orders are to catch the hood that Davi works for. So he and his partner hang around the house annoying everyone while hoping that Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez don’t sue for theft of plot device.

Strangely enough, Palance – who successfully furthers his new career as the tongue-in-check macho man of the senior citizen set – is one of the few funny things in the movie. He snarls most of the best lines and becomes a male role model for Chase’s kids.

The only cast member capable of holding her own opposite Palance is Dianne Wiest as Chase’s wife. In fact, she and Palance make for a better pairing than either of them do with Chase – and they’re not even supposed to like each other. Sadly, they’re the only things that make it possible to watch this movie at all.