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K
![]() Kop LieutenantLevel 3Armor Class: 10
Speed: 10
Magic Resistance: 20
Alignment: Neutral
Attacks:
Weight: 1450
Nutrition: 200
Other attributes:
The Kops are a brilliant concept. To take a gaggle of inept
policemen and display them over and over again in a series of riotously funny physical punishments plays equally well to the peanut gallery and the expensive box seats. People hate cops. Even people who have never had anything to do with cops hate them. Of course, we count on them to keep order and to protect us when we need protecting, and we love them on television shows in which they have nerves of steel and hearts of gold, but in the abstract, as a nation, collectively we hate them. They are too much like high school principals. We're very happy to see their pants fall down, and they look good to us with pie on their faces. The Keystone Kops turn up--and they get punished for it, as they crash into each other, fall down, and suffer indignity after indignity. Here is pure movie satisfaction. The Kops are very skillfully presented. The comic originality and timing in one of their chase scenes requires imagination to think up, talent to execute, understanding of the medium, and, of course, raw courage to perform. The Kops are madmen presented as incompetents, and they're madmen rushing around in modern machines. What's more, the machines they were operating in their routines were newly invented and not yet experienced by the average moviegoer. (In the early days of automobiles, it was reported that there were only two cars registered in all of Kansas City, and they ran into each other. There is both poetry and philosophy in this fact, but most of all, there is humor. Sennett got the humor.) [ Silent Stars, by Jeanine Basinger ] |
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