‘Coffee & Kareem’ Film Review: Ed Helms Stars in Messy Action Comedy With Occasional Laughs
An action-comedy whose default mode is a kind of sustained hysteria, “Coffee & Kareem” starts with buddy-movie tropes, massive amounts of firepower and even more four-letter words. It tosses them in a meat grinder with some wry psychobabble, some social commentary and a dash of family values and throws them against Netflix’s virtual wall to see what sticks.It’s kind of a mess, a crazy balancing act that flails as often as it connects. But director Michael Dowse, working from a Black Listed script by Shane Mack, has fun with the whole crazy concoction and finds at least one scene-stealing performance that hits just the right note of insanity.Over the years, Dowse has shown to be adept with mockumentary (the 2002 Sundance hit “Fubar”) and indie romantic comedy. But “Coffee & Kareem” is his second straight movie to focus on odd-couple crimefighters, after last year’s “Stuber” with ...