For nearly two decades, one show has chronicled the struggle of law enforcement as they battled along that thin blue line between order and chaos: Cops. It’s odd to think that the show’s been around for almost twenty years, but it’s very good at what it does and that success is thanks to a formula that includes the class struggle, drug abuse, the racial divide, and shirtless antics. You would think that this stuff wouldn’t be ripe for parody because it already kind of borders on parody as it is. Enter the writers and actors that make up the Comedy Central program Reno 911. They taught us all to laugh at incompetent policing again.



For their first big screen outing, the gang from the Reno Sheriff’s Department heads to Miami Beach, a surprising choice given that it took five Police Academy movies for them to get to the Beach. They’re invited to the National Police Convention along with every other police organization in the country, but a technical snafu leaves the Reno gang out in the cold and seeking shelter at a seedy Miami motel. Then a bio-terrorism attack traps the Mayor and entire Miami Police Department in the convention centre, so it’s up to Reno’s finest to keep the streets of Miami safe from, well, mostly themselves, but the criminal element too.



There are some great cameos in the film too including Patton Oswalt as the Assistant Deputy Mayor, The Rock as a gung ho SWAT cop, David Koechner as the Sheriff of Aspen and Paul Rudd as a Scarface-inspired drug kingpin. So the calibre of the cameos doesn’t air on the side of flashy (unless you count Danny DeVito as flashy of course, and maybe you do, I don’t know), but they are a group of very talented comedic actors. But the Reno 911 cast is a very talented class of comedic actors too. They are fearless and unyielding and in this uncensored effort, all bets are off, including the question of whether Dangle’s shorts can get any tighter.



The film is unquestionably funny with a great many laughs, but it’s hardly a movie in form as it preserves the same kind of episodic structure as the TV show; little vignettes with the cops out on patrol and encountering odd characters. Some of the sketches feel stale, like a scene where Dangle and Junior are called to a noise complaint at Suge Knight’s house and find a haven of pistol-packing thugs. There’s another scene where the typical country bumpkin “assists” in the “rasslin’” of a “Gator”. I guess the scope of it’s a little bigger because in one scene they use an attack chopper, but it’s still all shot in that faux-documentary style.



So there’s nothing really great about Reno 911: Miami, just a typical comedy that’s enjoyable if not offering something wholly original. There’s nothing that necessitates running out and seeing it on the big screen though, and it isn’t nearly the same kind of balls out offense-o-rama that Borat is, so it’s not like you’re missing out on much. Fans only? Not quite, but if your looking for laughs you can do worse, like Because I Said So worse.