Ed Helms plays a straitlaced Detroit cop trying to impress his
new girlfriend's (Taraji P. Henson) son (Terrence Little Gardenhigh) in Coffee
& Kareem. Unfortunately, the new Netflix buddy comedy is a major dud
with very few laughs to be found.
After Officer
Coffee picks up Kareem from school, the boy sneaks off and witnesses a murder.
Soon, the mismatched duo are on the run from both drug dealers and crooked
cops. The plotting is lazy. Every beat of the story is telegraphed from a mile
away. The same is true of the jokes, too, which always settle for the most
obvious punchlines possible. The characters have no depth beyond the single
dimension they're given at the start of the film.
Even though Coffee & Kareem is only 88 minutes including the ending credits, it's so thin that it still somehow manages to seem padded and overlong. Its closest cinematic comparison is the 1993 Burt Reynolds flop Cop and a Half. As you may have guessed, that's not a compliment.
