It’s No Crime to Laugh at ‘Cops,’ Especially in Chase Scenes

In “Cops and Robbersons,” an outwardly perfect but truly dysfunctional suburban family with a bumbling, ineffectual, cop-wannabe dad (Chevy Chase) allows a crusty old policeman and his assistant to move in to monitor a gangster who has moved in next door. (Rated PG.)

So what if the critics have been lukewarm?

Kids, especially in the 10- to 13-year-old range, said this “dumb comedy” was plenty good enough for them.

“It was better than average, I guess,” said Morgan McGilvray, 13. “Most of it was pretty funny.”

After a confusing start, the movie picked up in the middle and became genuinely funny toward the end, they said.

“It was weird because at the beginning you didn’t know what was happening; they just gave money to this guy and he got blown up,” said Dana Birnie, 10. “But then it cleared out. . . . It’s funny, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat.”

Her friend Jocelyn Jolley, 10, agreed about the suspense.

“Some parts you didn’t know what was going to happen. I was going like this,” she said, covering her round tortoise shell glasses with her hands.

One of those parts came when the mom (Dianne Wiest) gets in the shower without realizing the young assistant is already in there, she said.

Everyone agreed they laughed the hardest when Chevy Chase, in classic slapstick form, tries to rescue his family after they are taken hostage by their gangster neighbor in the midst of a showdown with another gangster. Imitating his movie heroes, Chase swings a grappling hook over to the house next door, hoping to make a dramatic entrance through the window.

“He’s swinging and hit the wall two times,” said Jack Reid, 12.

Carrie Clark, 7, said she liked it when the mom was a hostage and picked up one of the gangster’s guns and threatened him.

“She was really funny. She was saying, ‘Put down the gun before Mommy tells you twice.’ ” But then, it was pretty clear she was probably going to snap when, only a few days earlier, she was getting up at 4 a.m. to bake bread. Her older son smokes, and her daughter thinks she’s a woman trapped in a teen-age body. And the mom insists through clenched teeth that she loves being a housewife and her life is perfect .

The younger son also got some laughs with a vampire obsession--sleeping in his closed toy box and biting unsuspecting members of the household on the neck.

But even though they were all smitten for a while with the decisive, macho, smoker, loner cop “Uncle Jake,” they come to realize, predictably and improbably, that it’s their bumbling dad who loves them the most.

A majority of the kids said they were already Chase fans, from old movies such as “Fletch,” and “Funny Farm”--as opposed to late-night TV. But they agreed with the critics that in this movie he didn’t get the chance to show off his best form.

“I think he’s better than they showed him,” Dana said.

The problem, suggested Morgan, might be that Chase wasn’t showcased as the main character but was treated as just a family member.

Which wasn’t necessarily all bad.

“They had a little variety with all the different characters,” Morgan added.

If there was anything wrong with the movie it was that, at an hour and a half, it was too short, Dana said.

“It could have been a little longer. We thought it was going to be two hours.”