While looking for the buddy cop genre, quite a few options pop up. But only a select few have managed to end up becoming cult classics.
Plains, Trains, And Automobiles
The Eighties were a good time for fans of the buddy comedy genre. John Hughes’ 1988 masterpiece – Plains, Trains, And Automobiles is a fairly good example. Steve Martin is Neal Page, a marketing executive trying to get to his family before Thanksgiving. A chance encounter with John Candy’s Del Griffith changes things, stranding him in Wichita, Kansas.
Dumb & Dumber
Fresh off his success from The Mask and Ace Ventura, Jim Carrye starred alongside Jeff Daniels as Lloyd and Harry. the dumb duo must travel to Aspen to return one of Lloyd’s suitcases to a passenger. Little do they know the suitcase contains money related to a sinister kidnapping plot.
The Heat
Back in the early 2010’s, Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock were the cream of the A-lister crop. So Hollywood paired them together in 2013’s The Heat. McCarthy plays a hot headed detective. Bullock plays a by the book FBI agent. The duo’s chemistry was a hit and it is considered an underrated genre benchmark.
Step-Brothers
John C Reilly and Will Ferrell are two spoiled man-children who still live with their parents. Fed up with their antics, their parents leave them to their own devices. As the two step brothers bond over their mutual interests of emotional retardation, they realize they have more in common than they thought.
Hot Fuzz
Hot Fuzz is more or less a parody of the buddy cop comedy flick genre of Hollywood. Pegg plays a London super cop who is assigned to a relatively silent English hamlet. There he meets Nock Frost’s character, an action movie aficionado whose greatest dream in life is to shoot with two guns while in mid-air. And all is not as it seems in this quiet English countryside.
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Back in 2004, this was THE movie to watch on a Saturday night. Harold and Kumar are two friends who decide to get baked and go to White Caste, which supposedly sells the best burgers in the world. They have a night and a journey to remember.
Starsky & Hutch
Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson play two street-smart cops – Starsky and Hutch. using information from an informant named Huggy Bear (Snoop Dog), they must take down a huge drug trafficking ring. The entire movie takes place in the fictional Bay City, California on 1975.
21 Jump Street
Based on the hit 80’s TV show, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill star in one of the funniest comedy movies of the last decade. They are tasked with infiltrating a college the cops suspect is harboring a huge drug trafficking ring. The sequel to this movie is just as good.
Lethal Weapon
Shane Black, the master of the buddy cop genre, gave us Lethal Weapon in 1987. The rest is history. Danny Glover and Mel Gibson give one of their career best performances in this amazing popcorn flick.
The Other Guys
A buddy cop comedy featuring the funny Mark Wahlberg and the funnier Will Ferrell, it’s more like a social allegory on the 2008 financial crisis. Ferrell’s character is extremely methodic and systematic. Wahlberg’s character is more of a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy. There are also other great performances by popular actors like The Rock. Samuel L Jackson, and Michael Keaton.
Midnight Run
This is a buddy comedy where neither of the characters are cops or buddies. But it still manages to give us enough laughs. Robert De Niro plays a bounty hunter tasked with bringing a mob accountant (Charles Grodin) across the country. All things do not go according to plan.
Shanghai Noon
Jackie Chan has starred in some top notch buddy comedies. In Shanghai Noon, he starred alongside Owen Wilson in a rare western/martial arts hybrid. It is not your typical buddy cop movie but Roy O’Bannon and Chon Wang really hit it out of the park. There’s tons of laughs and even more nail-biting entertainment.
Rush Hour 3
Rush Hour 1 and Rosh Hour 2 helped establish the chemistry between Jackie Chan’s lee and Chris Tucker‘s Carter. But the third movie was where things went really international. there were kidnappings, covert conspiracies, over the top action sequences and extreme levels of ball busting comedy. Who could forget that scene where carter asks the Chinese master his name and all hell breaks loose “He is Mi and I am Yu”.
Bad Boys II
The 2003 Michael bay sequel to the 1995 movie is our choice for this list. despite being directed by Bay and having had a budget inflation, the movie still manages to top the original which is regarded as a classic. Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are a match made in heaven and it shows on screen.
Hobbs & Shaw
US Agent Hobbs (The Rock) & mercenary from Britain Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) must join forces to thwart an international conspiracy led by Briston Lore (Idris Elba), a genetically enhanced superhuman.
