Coffee & Kareem Review

Netflix is at it again, releasing another action cop comedy about a month off the heels of "Spencer Confidential." But social distancing proves to be working in their favor, as people can't head to the theaters to watch competent and decent films, they stay home and watch something like "Coffee & Kareem."

Ed Helms stars as James Coffee, a mild-mannered cop who's frequenting Vanessa (Taraji P. Henson). The two hide it from her son Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh), who ends up catching them during a particular moment of intimacy (a thoroughly unsexy and unfunny moment, I might add). Kareem, an aspiring rapper, gets a hold of a local criminal (every town has one), hoping to scare Coffee away from his mom. Things go wrong (gasp) and now Coffee and Kareem find themselves on the run from the local Detroit police and the crooks, who may or may not be working together (second gasp!).

It is certainly a lot better than last years repugnant "Shaft," and although that isn't much of an endorsement, at least you don't feel like you need a shower and a fiber supplement to cleanse your body inside and out.

To save you from watching the direct-to-streaming, eighty eight minute long film, it goes pretty much like this: bang bang, swear word, corrupt cops, racial joke, another racial joke, more bang bang, now homophobic joke, another corrupt cop, one last bang bang and then ends with a message about accepting one another as a family. Oh, then there are clean cops by the time the credits scroll, as if the film didn't want to send the message that all men and women in uniform are bought out by drugs, but has no trouble being bigoted.

If it all sounds trite, that's because it is. There isn't a moment that surprised me, no one plot twist that caught me off guard, and a whole lot of tasteless jokes that feel ripped straight from a Youtube comment section for a better movie. The film handles race with particular stumbling, never sure how to handle the racial dichotomy between the Kareem and the very white Coffee, and settles for stereotypes. The two almost have a chemistry, but it ultimately boils down to the titular duo just trading insults. In one rare moment of tenderness, the kid opens up to his mother's boyfriend about being awkward around girls. It's almost sweet, until you remember it takes place in a stripclub and Kareem is twelve.

But there isn't anything us viewers can do; we can't leave our homes, and the allure of watching an all-new movie is just all too tempting. It even has several well-known actors and actresses! It features a familiar premise with the promise that this time the genre has some new tricks. But it is a lie, and the only thing us customers can do is write mean things about it online.