Coffee & Kareem (2020)

Streaming Service: Netflix

Movie Name/Year: Coffee & Kareem (2020)

Genre: Action, Comedy

Length: 88 minutes

Rating: TV-MA

Production/Distribution: Pacific Electric Picture Company, Netflix

Director: Michael Dowse

Writer: Shane Mack

Actors: Ed Helms, Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Little Gardenhigh, Betty Gilpin, RonReaco Lee, David Alan Grier, Andrew Bachelor, William ‘Big Sleeps’ Stewart, Serge Houde, Eduard Witzke, Chance Hurstfield, Diana Bang, Erik McNamee, Samantha Cole, Terry Chen, Garfield Wilson, Arielle Tuliao

Blurb from IMDb: Twelve-year-old Kareem Manning hires a criminal to scare his mom's new boyfriend -police officer James Coffee - but it backfires, forcing Coffee and Kareem to team up in order to save themselves from Detroit's most ruthless drug kingpin.

Selina’s Point of View:

Although the title is a cute play on words, the movie really doesn’t live up to it.

The whole thing comes off as an attempt to update Cop & 1/2 (1993). Only, they took out anything that was cute or funny from the original and replaced it with full-on cringe and ‘too edgy for you’ script elements.

Now, Cop & 1/2 doesn’t have a great rating itself, but I’ll admit that I remember liking it. I haven’t seen it since I was about 13 so I can’t speak to how I’d feel about it at this point in my life, but it feels nostalgic to me. In the case of Coffee & Kareem I’m having trouble finding anything nice to say about it at all.

Taraji P. Henson (Empire, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Proud Mary) is the only thing that comes to mind. She’s a great actress and her character was the only one that I enjoyed watching. She plays a bad-ass single mom that would do anything to protect her family. First you see how that works in her dating life, later on it’s apparent in the more violent situations. If I have anything positive to say about the film it would have to do with Henson or her character.

Everything else was just awful. It was edge for the sake of edge. It was dressed up to try to masquerade as comedy, but it just didn’t work.

There are people who would enjoy this, but I wouldn’t even recommend it for a ‘turn your brain off’ movie night.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 20%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 31%

Metascore – 35/100

Metacritic User Score – 2.8/10

IMDB Score – 5.1/10

CinemaScore – None

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 1.5/5

Movie Trailer: