Cops and Their Buddies: Movie Team-Ups We Love

In 'Central Intelligence,' Dwayne Johnson is a once-bullied CIA agent who enlists the former "big" man on campus from his high school, played by Kevin Hart, to help him on a case. Hijinks ensue! Let's look at other movies in which cops and civilians team up for wacky adventures.

Another Kevin Hart movie. Here he plays a security guard who helps a hard-nosed police detective (Ice Cube) take down Atlanta’s most notorious criminal during a 24-hour ride along. The catch? He wants to marry Cube's sister. The sequel found them tracking a drug dealer in Atlanta.

One cop. One con. And the rest is action comedy history! Nick Nolte is a gruff police detective who teams with Eddie Murphy’s wise-cracking convict to track down a pair of vicious cop killers. The result is nearly '2 Hrs.' (okay, okay) of entertainment.

In this classic ’70s comedy, Goldie Hawn plays a shy San Francisco librarian who helps Chevy Chase’s bumbling PD solve a crime involving albinos, dwarves and a plot to assassinate the Pope. Complicating matters is their budding romance.

Long before Tom Hanks started winning Oscars for more serious dramatic roles, he did the buddy comedy thing -- first on TV ('Bosom Buddies') and then in films like 'Dragnet.' Here, Hanks is partnered with his first non-human buddy, a drooling junkyard dog named Hooch, whose canine instincts help Hanks’ uptight police detective solve a murder case.

At the height of his late ‘80s/early ‘90s fame, Michael J. Fox spoofed his movie star image playing a spoiled actor who hires a hard-boiled NYC police detective (James Woods) to teach him how to convincingly play a cop on-screen. What begins with a simple ride-along escalates into a full-blown partnership as the two try and stop a demented serial killer called the “Party Crasher.”

Although it was a notorious box office dud, this offbeat comedy gets a few laughs out of the pairing of Sylvester Stallone as a tough guy police detective and 'Golden Girls' star Estelle Getty as the meddling mother who helps him solve crimes. (It was her first costarring feature role at age 69.)

At this point in his career, Bruce Willis was famous for fighting crime solo in the 'Die Hard' films but here he gets a worthy on-screen partner in 'In Living Color' sketch comedy star Damon Wayans, who bulked up to play an ex-quarterback who teams up with Willis’ cynical detective to solve a murder case involving a pro football team and a politician.

Burt Reynolds plays a cranky veteran cop forced to partner with an 8-year-old murder witness (Devon Butler) who agrees to help the police with their investigation on the condition he’s made a cop. Together, the two team up for a series of comic misadventures as they try and bring the killer to justice.

In this period Western, Jackie Chan is the Chinese equivalent of a cop playing an Imperial Guard sent to retrieve a princess kidnapped and taken to America. He finds an unlikely partner in Owen Wilson’s small-time robber, who joins him for a rescue mission packed with cross-cultural laughs and Chan’s signature high-kicking moves.

'The Last Boy Scout' screenwriter Shane Black (writer-director of 2016 buddy cop team-up 'The Nice Guys') riffs on genre conventions in his directorial debut. It stars Robert Downey Jr. as an NYC crook who stumbles into an acting career and moves out to Hollywood, where he receives training on how to play a police detective from Val Kilmer’s aptly named gay private detective, Gay Perry. 

A case of mistaken identity forces Samuel L. Jackson’s no-nonsense law enforcement agent to buddy up with an overly talkative dental supply salesman (Eugene Levy). Together, the comic twosome pulls off a sting operation and gets revenge on the criminals who killed Jackson’s partner. 

Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon costarred in this buddy comedy about a rookie cop (Fallon) who gets unexpected help from a feisty, speed-loving cab driver (Latifah) to stop a bank robbery. Although based on a superior French comedy of the same name, this fast-paced remake has enough laughs to please fans of its charismatic leads.

Certainly the strangest buddy-cop comedy on our list is this bizarre-o curiosity starring Whoopi Goldberg as a female police detective paired with a talking dinosaur – that’s right, talking dinosaur – to track down a dino killer in a futuristic society. Although the film went straight to DVD, it proves that just about any type of person – or creature – can prove a cop’s greatest asset in catching the bad guy.

In another weird take on the genre, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays both a serial killer and his clone (you read that right), created to help Michael Rooker's undercover cop who has been pursuing the bad guy for years.

Check for these movies streaming on FandangoNOW.