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Taking
campy '70's buddy cop shows to whole new levels, John
Besser & Nick Gentile create a rather charming new
cop parody in their short, "Cop Cake."
Since
70's cop shows tended to pair a loud-mouthed cop--usually
from Jersey--with virtually anything, even a monkey--Besser
and co-writer Gentile decided to take it up a notch and
make a cop show about a fast-talking, pistol-waving, Jersey-twanging
cop who's partnered with a piece of cake.
Nothing
is animated in this short film. They simply have the main
character run after the bad guys and, wherever he ends
up, his partner--the slice of cake on a pie plate is mysteriously
already there. There are pictures of the main character
getting drunk with the slice of cake on his shoulder and
all of the driving in the movie is done by the piece of
cake, despite his lack of arms or, for that matter, movement
of any form.
While
it's a somewhat bizarre concept, they manage to make a
rather intriguing short film, nonetheless.
Content
Cop Cake feels a whole lot like an extended Mad
TV skit, with the main character, Ramsey (Nick Gentile,
the co-writer), reminding me of a slimmer version of Will
Sasso from that show's legacy years. The concept is so
ludicrous, that the humor could easily have fallen through
the cracks if not for some rather tight acting from Gentile
as well as some smart editing by Besser. Because of these
two aspects, they manage to walk the tight line of humor
which Mad TV seems to stay on but which SNL
has long since fallen off of.
The
storyline for the first episode follows the main character
and his sidekick as they are sent by their silk boxers-clad
boss (who looks somewhat like a portlier version of Samho
Hyung) to track down a notorious latino gangster named Frito
Lay. Frito Lay, clad in 70's enterpretation Mexican-gear,
complete with badly colored suit, big gold earring shaped
into a money sign, wheels around town to commit his dastardly
deeds on a foot-powered scooter.
As they
make strange misstep after misstep in their search to track
down the potato-chip-monikered villain, there are lots of
great sequences between the main character and Cake. All
Cake's commentary is implied by the answers he gets from
his partner, much as all of R2-D2's commentary is implied
by the comments he gets from C-3PO and Luke Skywalker.
Perhaps
my favorite sequence in this short film involves Gentile's
character taking a shower and calling out to Cake, who's
seated on the couch in the living room, to pick up the phone.
Through the miracle of editing, after a quick cut back to
Gentile, we come back to the living room to find that Cake
has the phone unhooked around him and is apparently talking
to someone on the other end. The fact that this was edited
together as smoothly as it was allowed this strange scene
to work quite nicely.
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