Coffee & Kareem

Directed by Michael Dowse, Coffee & Kareem follows put-upon police officer James Coffee (Ed Helms) as he’s forced to team up with his girlfriend’s (Taraji P. Henson’s Vanessa) loathsome son (Terrence Little Gardenhigh’s Kareem) after the surly teen witnesses a murder. It’s a familiar setup that’s employed to pervasively erratic effect by Dowse, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Shane Mack, delivers a hit-and-miss comedy that suffers from a seriously grating performance by Gardenhigh – with the actor’s nails-on-a-chalkboard turn as an often unreasonably obnoxious figure threatening to derail the production on a lamentably recurrent basis. There’s little doubt, then, that the movie benefits substantially from a narrative that gleefully embraces the various tropes and conventions of the buddy genre, with the inclusion of familiar yet welcome elements (eg the angry captain, the increasingly exasperated villain, etc) generally smoothing over the frequent missteps in Mack’s screenplay (eg Coffee attempts to intimidate a witness by angrily flirting with him). By the time the relatively compelling third act rolls around, Coffee & Kareem has cemented its place as a watchable endeavor that certainly receives plenty of mileage out of Helms’ typically (and persistently) ingratiating efforts as the oddball hero (and, it should be noted, Gardenhigh’s character does soften as the picture unfolds, which ensures that the chemistry between his and Helms’ respective protagonists steadily improves).

**1/2 out of ****

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