Lola-Out Mashup Review

Originally I tried to write a review of both Jacques Demy's Lola (1961), and Kevin Smith's Cop-Out as if they were the same movie. The results of this were... uninspiring to say the least. However I'm not willing to give up on the idea that there is some sort of link between the two movies (seen on back-to-back nights).So let's give this a shot instead. Sure, Cop-out was just a flat out cop-out of a movie, and Lola was at least pretty, but they do share certain elements.


Two attempts at that later... Let's just say there are similarities. Both are by directors outside of their comfort zone. Both are homages (or as Tracy Morgan has you believe, "hahmm-ijs") to the films that made them fall in love with movies. There's an obvious difference between an homage to Ophuls and an homage to Beverly Hills Cop, but then again that's the difference between Demy and Smith, or between filmmakers and, well, whatever it is that Kevin Smith is.

We've also got an odd synchronicity with how much each spends on language translation. Much of Lola is spent with French characters not understanding English, but in love with America as a cultural signpost of everything good in the world. Cop-out spends most of its time (actually an insane amount of time really) on how the central characters don't speak any Spanish, and on Mexican culture as a place of fear. Why do both movies spend so much time on this? What is added to the film, in both case?

While we're at it, the ways in which they use kids (inappropriately) share some surprising resonance.

You know what, I don't know where I'm going with this. Cop-Out was awful. Total waste of time. Tracy Morgan was funny, but too funny for this. Lola had some lovely bits, though was still pretty slight. Is there a way to deepen the appreciation of these two by comparing? God I hope so, though perhaps the whole operation is a bit of a dead-end.