Harmless, but fairly unfunny

“Cops and Robbersons” is an innocuous sitcom. One that would probably get canceled fairly quickly but not because it’s so atrocious as to feel violently angry you spent time watching it. It just doesn’t have many laughs and the ones it does have actually don’t come from the comic actor (in this case Chevy Chase) but the heavy, played by Jack Palance.

The film takes place in suburbia, where Norman Robberson (Chase) laments the fact his children seem to be moving away from him and his wife (Dianne Wiest) has her own life. He’s a cubicle drone who also happens to be a cop fanatic- watching old reruns of Columbo and Kojack- and even reading the police penal code at lunch breaks.

It seems a mobster (Robert Davi, always reliably menacing) has moved in next door to him and the cops need a command post for a police stakeout. Norman is ecstatic to learn that they’ve picked his house, only they are far less enthused that he plans on helping them in their investigation, whether they want it or not.

The lead cop is played by Palance, in another gruff, surly loner comic performance cashing in on his “City Slickers” success. His Jake has a dutiful speech about upholding the thin blue line, which made me laugh. So did a scene where he claims Norman is a mental defective when both are confronted by the mobster. In fact, a lot of Palance’s lines work more so from the rough delivery. You only wish he was allowed to curse more.

It goes downhill from there though, starting with Chase’s Norman. Here’s a character we’re supposed to root for in wanting to be a cop, but instead it’s hard to even sympathize with him as a functional human. Cast as the next nebbish for Palance to play off of, he instead is more a braying idiot- mindlessly walking into situations he doesn’t belong in, arousing suspicions of the criminals, and klutzing his way through most of the movie in “Magoo” like fashion, only instead of lack of sight, he just has no real sense.

The worst scene in the film has him agreeing to host the two cops, without telling his wife or anyone else until the next morning. In a comedy sequence so contrived and easy to see coming, both one of the cops and the clueless wife wind up naked in the same shower together. With such a desperate sequence happening so early, it doesn’t seem all that surprising that director Michael Ritchie speeds the pace of the film along, probably to cover a lot of the script’s holes.

Too bad the whole concept eventually just begins to feel like one giant crater. I didn’t believe for a second that Jake becomes so beloved in the family that they consider him “Uncle Jake”. The Robberson’s 5-year old loves to play vampire and I found it obnoxious that they keep letting him jump on Palance’s back and suck his blood. Norman is such a simpleton that him handling a firearm or pretending to be a cop actually made me nervous, and little mishaps, misunderstandings, and scenes where Norman tries to conceal Jake’s occupation from the villain or the family are meant to be funny, but aren’t.

Even if some of this stuff were to play a little better laugh-wise, I think I would eventually still come to the conclusion of “who cares?”. This is a comedy where everything that happens is so small, weightless, and contrived- it’s hard to buy into any of it and it’s amazing just how slight the ideas the filmmakers had for this concept actually wound up being. There’s not an ounce of cleverness in it passed the title.