When combing Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, great laughs are not the first things that come to mind. “Cop Out” however, was a laugh-a-minute ride — of course, having Kevin Smith directing makes this feat of laughter a much easier task.

The first scenes of the movie set the pace perfectly. Willis and Morgan are partners in their ninth year in the NYPD. Their tactics for interrogation involve playing roles to mess with the people involved while entertaining themselves. It’s not altogether dissimilar from the antics of “Super Troopers.” Morgan starts playing characters from various movies to make Willis laugh through the two-way mirror of the interrogation room, while Willis draws vulgar objects pointed at the perpetrator’s mouth in the steam built up on the mirror. Morgan continues his regular stand-up comic deliveries the entire film while Willis keeps a sort of tough guy appearance, chuckling to himself regularly. The laughs just keep going.

To keep with the ’80s style this movie has, celebrity cameos are a regularity — well, that and it may actually be impossible for Smith to not use oodles of actors for bit parts, because that’s the way he makes movies. Jason Lee plays the new husband of Willis’ ex-wife, for example. Lee is the overly rich jerk trying to make Willis look bad in front of his daughter. His daughter is played by the all grown-up   — yet still extremely young looking — Michelle Trachtenberg. She’s getting married, her dream wedding is going to cost $50,000 and Willis can only pay for it by selling a priceless baseball card. And just to keep with the classic cop story, Willis and Morgan are suspended for their odd methods of police work and destruction of public property.

That’s how the plot starts.

As Willis goes to sell the card, he is robbed by Sean William Scott’s insane, quick-witted, Parkour-using, pseudo-criminal character — Parkour is that cool martial art thing where people jump off of walls and climb buildings and dive through windows while fluidly twisting and turning. Yeah, it’s awesome. So, he steals the priceless card and hawks it for a cavalcade of drugs to the villain of the story: a wannabe drug czar of the East Coast with a baseball memorabilia obsession.

Morgan’s character has the secondary plot as he worries about marital infidelity and torments himself with anxiety while trying to help Willis. All of these stories naturally intertwine to create hijnks and gun fights while stringing together scenes that would normally be looked at as a loose plot, but the jokes are just so tickling it all works. There are other celebrity cameo cops played by Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody and more one-liners and childish humor than can be reasoned as Scott steals every scene he graces. The whole flick leads up to a big shoot-out climax full of violence portrayed in such a cartoonish way it can barely be called violent — even when people are shot in the head, it’s funny.

“Cop Out” was an unexpectedly, amazingly funny film that pays homage to ’80s style and doesn’t get lost in itself by trying to make some attempt at having meaningful plot. It’s an excellent way to spend an evening or afternoon and a great way to release some laughter-driven endorphins.

Oh, and make sure to stay into the credits for extra laughs.

Gabriel Stoffa is senior in communication studies and political science from Ottumwa.