Film Review – Coffee & Kareem

The directorial career of Michael Dowse has been difficult to follow. The helmer has made a few distinct impressions over the years, delivering the interesting “It’s All Gone Pete Tong,” and he built a genuine cult classic with the hockey comedy, “Goon.” He’s also had some duds, including last summer’s bomb, “Stuber,” which tried way too hard to be funny, ending up a laugh-less noise machine. Dowse’s sensitivity to silly business goes almost completely numb with “Coffee & Kareem,” which basically reheats the formula of self-aware action and riffing galore that ruined “Stuber,” only here the screenplay (credited to Shane Mack) falls apart right from the first scene. Profane and insipid, “Coffee & Kareem” is a bad title stuck with a worse film, making very little effort to become the semi-parody it wants to become, held back consistently by lame jokes, air horn performances, and Dowse’s inability to tighten the reins on the production and squeeze out some decent wackiness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com