Ah… It’s good to be back from camp.

We spent the entire summer out in the great outdoors, but it’s time to get back to serious business here at B-Movie Enema. And since it’s time to deal with serious, very grown-up business, I think we should look no further than Red Letter Media. Wait… Really? They’re our serious business?

Last time we looked at ol’ RLM, it was for their 2010 horror comedy Feeding Frenzy. Back then, they were still largely known as the guys who did the Mr. Plinkett reviews. They wouldn’t have actual sustained success as a YouTube channel until Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman created their review show Half in the Bag, which, in itself, rolled into other popular shows, the most popular of them all being Best of the Worst. Through these shows, this is where Rich Evans would gain most of his popularity.

Evans, a guy who was largely in the Plinkett reviews as the on-screen portrayal of Harry Plinkett, and reprised that in Feeding Frenzy, was maybe a little understated and shy early on in his Best of the Worst appearances. However, whether by way of him really kind of becoming one of the more common panelists on the show, or through Stoklasa’s constant belittling and lampooning, Rich Evans would become a major figure on RLM. This would often lead to him being the guy I think most viewers might say they appreciate even more than Mike and Jay, the obvious faces of the media company. And so, he got the chance to create another character, the title character of this week’s featured film, Space Cop.

I think it’s important to understand a few things about Space Cop. First, this came together very quickly after RLM started their most popular shows (the aforementioned Half in the Bag and Best of the Worst). It’s very clearly inspired by the nights Bauman, Stoklasa, and Evans (among others) spent doing bad movie nights, which then inspired Best of the Worst. Second, this does kind of stem from their own desire to use tropes in parody, like they did with Feeding Frenzy.

But the third thing that I think stands out a little bit more than it does in Feeding Frenzy is the fact that Space Cop is maybe a little more dependent on in-jokes that the more dedicated fans of RLM’s would understand more than outsiders and normies.

That’s not necessarily bad, but the movie was not quite the hit some people might think it deserves to be. Mike and Jay often crack jokes about how they ended up with a ton of unsold copies of Space Cop. I’m not necessarily here to say this movie is worth being picked apart or hated on. I do think, though, it is important to understand that Mike and Jay can often ding a movie they are reviewing due to “memberberries” and other fan service type of stuff. Buuuut… I also think this movie does a lot of that with RLM’s content too. I’ll have a little more to say on that a little later, but let’s just jump right in and revel in the glorious performance of Rich Evans as Space Cop.

Space Cop comes from the world of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the year 2058. The moon has been colonized and is currently under threat from a madman with a laser gun. The mayor of the moon and some dignitaries are being held captive. Also, if you look real close, the coat of arms for the Moon says “E Pluribus Moonum.” Brilliant.

Good news for the Mayor of the Moon, Space Cop has answered the call to rescue him and the dignitaries. We learn right away that Space Cop wears a vest that creates some sort of force shield. That comes in handy for when people shoot him. Like, at this moment, when the bad guy is shooting at him. Space Cop also has a hostage negotiator program built into his wrist computer.

Buuuut… it’s low on charge, so it needs to be charged before he can talk to the bad guy holding everyone hostage. And that bad guy is really keen on shooting his hostages. He still listens to the demands of the gunman. He wants a million space credits, a transport, and a promise that he is not followed.

The negotiation program responds with an offer to not be hurt if he surrenders. The gunman says no, so it moves to the next stage of the negotiation, a tactical response. Space Cop shoots the guy through the head. Seems like everything is coming up Space Cop, but the Mayor of the Moon says that there was a bomb rigged in the mines where the guy worked. If his heart stops, the bomb will go off. The bomb goes off. Hundreds of people are dead thanks to Space Cop’s hasty trigger finger. His response?

“You’re welcome.”

When he’s not on the job, he spends his time in his tiny cubicle of an apartment. He gets a call from the Chief of the Space Police (Patton Oswalt). He’s calling about that Moon thing. Chief says Space Cop’s too brash and too much of a loose cannon. So, they are promoting Space Cop to traffic cop. Chief says, in so many words, Space Cop is being rewarded for his gross incompetence.

Space Cop is now doing his traffic cop business. He chases after a speeding alien vessel. It’s trying to catch a larger ship that is about to enter a wormhole. Space Cop fires on both the smaller and larger vessels. This causes malfunctions in the larger ship’s instruments, and both it and Space Cop are pulled into the wormhole. Space Cop awakens in the year 2007. Now, stuck in the past, Space Cop gets a job with the Milwaukee police.

Eight years later, Space Cop is still copping… He’s quick to kill a man holding a baby hostage, which led to the man dropping the baby into a pot of boiling water. That was AFTER he killed the man’s wife, and the mother of that baby, by crushing her under the door he knocked down to enter the house. He still gets into trouble from his chief, who chews him out for killing everyone in the hostage situation.

He’s told by another cop, who always refers to Space Cop as “Skip Scop,” that some bad stuff is going down at a lab where a bunch of people are being kept in cryogenic freeze. A silent alarm has been tripped by two perps who appear human but are actually aliens in disguise. They are part of the same group of aliens that traveled back through time with Space Cop eight years earlier.

A laser fight breaks out between the aliens and Space Cop. Right away, Space Cop’s partner is wounded and decides to simply sit out the entire battle. Some of the cryogenic tanks are opened by being hit by the lasers volleying back and forth. In this sequence, we get a woman who hopes she’s awoken during a time in which her pancreatic cancer can be cured, only to find out she was woken up nine years too early. One guy checks on his Enron stock only to die of a heart attack upon learning there is a black president. One tank is just a skeleton that collapses.

But the fourth one contains Detective Ted Cooper (Stoklasa). He refuses to get out of the way until he receives answers to his questions about where and when he is. The aliens escape, and Cooper becomes Space Cop’s new partner. Cooper proves to be a bit of a by-the-book detective. That is the exact opposite of Space Cop, aside from the fact that one is from the past and the other from the future.

But what were the aliens wanting? Well, they were stealing the frozen brain of Dr. Schuman. The aliens attempted to stop the assassination of Schuman, and that’s why they were trying to go back in time. They were supposed to arrive in 1985, but Space Cop ruined that, and they ended up in 2007 and needed another eight years to find Schuman’s brain. Schuman does not realize he is working with aliens, but the aliens want to do whatever they can to help him carry on his work. The first thing he needs is a new body.

Space Cop and Cooper are assigned to the case of the Gold Digger. The Gold Digger breaks into houses and museums and steals only gold. He steals nothing else. They think it’s a suspect named Grigg McCool. Grigg is played by Jay Bauman. He was with the alien disguised as the redheaded alien (Zorba, played by Jocelyn Ridgely) at the cryogenics lab. She’s called him a liability in their overarching schemes to revive Dr. Schuman.

Cooper and Space Cop go on a stakeout and find Grigg. They follow him into a bar. There, Cooper stands out for asking for a Zima, and Space Cop is… Space Cop.

Cooper realizes he’s sitting right next to Grigg. He strikes up a conversation with the perp. Grigg complains about the radiation of this planet’s sun, which causes him to barf up plorgabile. Cooper rolls with that odd statement but is able to keep Grigg engaged in a conversation when the alien sees the gold watch the detective is wearing.

Using his alien tech, Grigg steals the watch by using a tiny little teleporter that snatches it right off Cooper’s wrist. This leads to a chase scene. Pretty much right away, Space Cop is incapacitated because his tactical screen inside his helmet is infected by a virus that keeps throwing porn site ads onto the screen. Also, we should remember that Jay Bauman is a little smaller and seemingly more fit than Stoklasa, so it’s not an easy chase for the “heroes.”

Thankfully, Grigg is unable to get around some toys on the ground and a chainlink fence. So he’s captured by Cooper and Space Cop. Grigg won’t say anything about nuthin’. They can’t keep Grigg, so Cooper says they need to set a trap for Grigg. They’ll get a bunch of gold and make it impossible for Grigg to resist it.

So, they dress Space Cop up as a famous European rapper, Diggity D. He’s decked out in gold. They get him on the morning show. During the interview, he says where he’s staying, what floor, and what room. The CD he is promoting is called “Leaving My Hotel Room Unlocked.” Naturally, Grigg is too enticed to pass up this golden opportunity.

See… See what I did there?

Griggs arrives at the hotel room. He starts snatching everything gold from “Diggity D” while Cooper takes pictures to use as evidence he is the Gold Digger. The fact that Diggity D was staying at The Pfister hotel in downtown Milwaukee leads to an extended series of gay sex jokes that are good enough for a chuckle or a slight grin, but also feel really out of place too.

I think this is part of the double-edged sword that is Space Cop. Independently, the scenes, the dialogue, and the general goofiness of either Evans’ Space Cop or Stoklasa’s Cooper are funny. However, this movie pushes all this to its extremes. The movie is like 105 minutes. That’s a LOT for this concept. As a skit or a series of funny little segments, the Space Cop character and his overly straight and naive partner can be quite funny.

However, this movie can, at times, border on tedium. That’s really not where you want your overly goofy comedy to be. Even if you want your overly goofy comedy to appeal to a built-in fanbase, you can’t stretch your audience’s limits too much. There’s a way that you can do that through the typical Tim and Eric style of awkward humor that eventually goes from being uncomfortable before horseshoeing back into something funny, but that’s not what this movie is doing. It’s just taking the Red Letter Media style humor, with a singular concept, and then stretching it out to over 100 minutes.

And you could maybe argue it’s not sticking with a singular concept, but I’ll circle back around to that later.

Space Cop and Cooper follow Grigg to his regular hideout. While they wait for something to happen during their stakeout, Cooper says he doesn’t want to visit his wife because she’s probably gross and elderly. Space Cop explains that he’s unhappy with either the past or the future. In the future, his wife will be dead. In the past, she had not been born yet. She was killed by some guy, who later got killed in a shootout with the Space Cops. If only there were a way to stop that from happening… in the future. If only there was a way…

Anyway, they followed Grigg to a corporation’s office. Cooper tells Space Cop to take the lead on this one. The office building is where the aliens are operating. They meet with the CEO of this company, and they don’t even recognize that he’s got a picture of his alien family sitting on the desk. We also learn Space Cop’s real name – Holden Madickey.

This is the stuff that really works. Space Cop explains that all Space Cops change their names to Space Cop to protect their anonymity and prevent their loved ones from being harmed. Except in Space Cop’s case, because his wife was killed anyway. So, it didn’t do him any good to change his name anyway. That’s really funny stuff.

The better joke, though, is the family photo with the aliens in plain sight. There are several shots of this staring us right in the face, but Space Cop and Cooper are completely oblivious to it. And they should be. Why would they think to look at the guy’s family picture? That’s really good stuff.

The scene ends with a fart joke – Space Cop rips ass after eating a bunch of M&M’s.

The CEO of the company, Agnon, did mention something interesting to Space Cop. He started Aleon Steel in 2007. That was the same year he arrived from the future. Also, Aleon makes Chromatanium. That’s the stuff used in the construction of Space Cop’s car. It’s highly resistant to gravity. But it’s also not supposed to be invented for another 25 years.

Knowing that Space Cop and Cooper are getting a little too close to their operations, Agnon calls for Zorba to deal with the cops. She follows the two cops to Space Cop’s favorite hangout – the titty bar. After Space Cop’s favorite dancer, Candy, finishes up, Zorba takes the stage. She is an alien, so human sexuality and sensuality are, well, alien to her. But Space Cop kinda likes how she flails and flops about on stage. He likes his women to have a little bit of brain damage. That increases the chances of them sleeping with him.

She wants to take the two cops for a private dance, but Cooper declines. Space Cop isn’t going to pass up this chance. Before she can reach for the aloof Space Cop’s gun, Cooper comes in to break up this moment. He smelled something fishy, and it wasn’t her lady clam!

Space Cop rips her disguise off to reveal Zorba is, indeed, an alien from Proximus Centuari. She runs away and explains that aliens do exist, like it’s an everyday happening to him. Cooper calls Space Cop an idiot who is only interested in violence. Cooper says he is going to put in for a transfer so that he will no longer be Space Cop’s partner. He can’t believe that Space Cop can’t even put two and two together that Aleon Steel is run by the same aliens that traveled from the future with Space Cop.

Speaking of Aleon Steel, Dr. Schuman is nearing the completion of his project. There is only one last piece to his invention that he needs. Zorba will be obtaining it, but it won’t be easy. It’s a good thing she’s got an idea and a plan.

Elsewhere, Space Cop is drinking himself to oblivion. The bartender suggests he always has the chance to change the future. He finds the guy who killed his wife… When he was a child. He drunkenly kills the kid’s father. So now we think the revenge plot is for Space Cop killing his father when he was a kid. Space Cop chases the kid down and kills him by lasering a train car on a bridge above the kid, which then falls on the kid, crushing him and exploding.

Cooper learns about Dr. Schuman. The lab guy at the cryogenic lab tells Cooper that the guy was a misanthrope, and he has a videotape with the news report about Schuman’s assassination. He was working on a project called X-39. He slips and says it will mark the end of mankind. He’s killed by a group of people who opposed X-39. X-39 was about creating an artificial singularity. Skeptics believed it was going to basically destroy the whole world.

The reason why the aliens needed Schuman’s brain was that the only copy of the plans for X-39 was in his brain. He shared these plans with no one else. He didn’t keep notes either. So no one else would be able to recreate this project.

Cooper calls Space Cop to tell him about the aliens’ project. They need to work together again and get to space as soon as possible. Cooper explains that the big master plan of the aliens is to suck the Earth into a black hole. They are going to save the planet and everyone on it… Except for the people on an airplane, that they don’t realize they ran right into it as they flew into space.

On the spaceship, the aliens deliver the plutonium for the X-39 project to be completed. After getting everything he needs, Schuman kills Agnon and the other scientists. Zorba is the only one left alive. She explains they never intended to build a weapon. Their planet was dying. They hoped to use X-39 to help create a renewable power source. Dr. Schuman only ever wanted to destroy Earth, and now he is about to do so.

X-39 starts to suck power from the aliens’ ship’s power core. Once it has enough power, X-39 will create the singularity, and it will continue to grow with nothing to stop it. Zorba says that if they can transfer the power to somewhere else, there’s a 90% chance they can stop Schuman. Space Cop doesn’t give two fucks about this science project. He just wants to kill Schuman until he’s dead, and his plan doesn’t work anymore. Zorba and Cooper work on transferring the power from the power core to Space Cop’s car, which didn’t have enough power to get back to Earth anyway.

Space Cop runs into Grigg. Grigg won’t help Space Cop out of spite. All they wanted was to save their planet, but Space Cop kept getting in the way. Now, his wife and all his alien babies are dead. He just wants to see Space Cop suffer when Earth dies. So they get into a fight, and we get to see Rich Evans’ stunt double, karate master Len Kabasinski, kick Jay Bauman’s ass.

While Zorba and Cooper continue to work on transferring the power from the core to Space Cop’s car, Space Cop massacres aliens. At first, one comes up to him to say they desperately need his help. Because he doesn’t speak their language, he throws the alien through the wall. Other aliens ask him what he’s done to their friend, and he starts shooting all of them. The last one he comes across, he rips the alien’s head off and beats the body to death with his own spine.

Space Cop faces off against the brain of Dr. Schuman and is quickly overpowered by the mechanical arms connected to the brain. Zorba and Cooper siphon off the power and shut down X-39. So Schuman uses Space Cop’s gun to charge up X-39 once again. Zorba and Cooper arrive in the lab. Schuman has total control over the ship’s computers. Zorba has one last attempt. She tries to upload a virus into the computer to initiate a self-destruct.

Space Cop has another plan – punch Schuman’s brain jar and then the brain itself until the evil scientist dies.

Space Cop gets the key to the city, even though he still thinks he works a fucking thankless job. Cooper is transferred to Chicago Homicide. It turns out his brain tumor, the reason why he was frozen to begin with, was just bad gas. His wife died ten years ago, and his kids have no idea who he is. He’s depressed and has to fight off the urge to blow his own brains out each and every day. The kid who will someday grow up to kill Space Cop’s wife survived the train falling on him. So, there was no way to change the future like Space Cop believed.

Space Cop is not without laughs. It really has several funny jokes and some pretty good sight gags. The problem is that this movie is probably either too long or too complicated or both. If I were to compare it to the earlier feature from RLM, Feeding Frenzy, it’s a little more competent in how it’s made. The sets are more elaborate, and the digital effects on display are actually pretty good. Feeding Frenzy is a little more focused, though. There is still a lot of room for the RLM-style jokes in that earlier movie. However, that movie doesn’t really stop dead for those jokes. The plot still moves forward, and the overarching plot of the movie comes down to a mad scientist who has little critters that eat everyone. The ultimate goal is to revive his dead wife, and that’s where the little monsters come from. It’s simple.

Space Cop, while absolutely trading off the convoluted plots and overly serious characters of the movies these guys watch while on Best of the Worst, is a little too unfocused at times. We have a dumb cop from the future who wants to shoot everything up. He’s following aliens into the past, but then there are more complicated plots that are brought into play. Sure, the jokes can land nicely, but there are times in which the movie could be just as funny, and a hell of a lot tighter, if they didn’t have to inject a joke at the expense of the stupidity of our main characters into each scene.

That actually brings me to another point. We want Space Cop to be the dumb guy. Do we also need Cooper to be a dumb guy too? All that ends up overburdening the movie, creating that tedium that I commented on earlier from the comedy side of things.

It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s kind of funny how much they rely on jokes that only people who watch their stuff religiously will get. There are lots of references to things that they’ve made fun of from the Star Wars prequels or lines from other movies from Best of the Worst that they found funny. These are things they poke at from other movies and other fandoms. It comes off a little hypocritical.

Personally, I still love the stuff they do at Red Letter Media, even if I don’t always agree on their critiques. I’m still plenty happy when a new video from them pops up on my YouTube feed. I don’t see anything that will change that coming along anytime soon. I’d rather live in a world with Space Cop than in one that doesn’t have this movie around.

Next time, I’m gonna look at a movie that was reviewed in an early episode of Best of the Worst. It’s one of those killer monkey movies of the 80s, but this one came out in 1990. Join me as I play a role-playing game while trying to avoid the deadly baboon known as SHAKMA!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m due for a private dance from Zorba.