Somewhere, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller and Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are all welcoming Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy into their fold of “Victims of Buddy-Cop Movies.”

Like these acting duos’ films, “The Man” joins the ranks of movies that force two incompatible characters to work with each other. It also turns into an ongoing cliche of old material.

Jackson plays Special Agent Derrick Vann, a tough-guy Detroit ATF agent. When his partner, a dirty cop involved in a government gun heist, is found dead, Internal Affairs suspects him of committing the crime.

In order to clear his name, he decides to track down the thieves who were in cahoots with his partner before they can unload the guns. Vann then sets up an undercover buy to retrieve the weapons.

His sting operation goes awry, however, when Wisconsin dental supplier Andy Fidler, played by Eugene Levy, unknowingly steps in the middle of it. When Andy is mistaken for Vann, the movie falls into the predictable storyline of an oblivious outsider being sucked into a dangerous middleman position.

In order for Vann’s plan to work, he has to keep Andy in his custody to pass off as a black-market gun buyer. This throws them together in their unlikely, although predictable, partnership.

Of course, keeping with the tradition of buddy-cop films, the major premise of the movie is built around the characters’ differences of personality. The big question is not whether Vann can pull off his operation, but whether he can share his car with bumbling Andy without killing him.

The only problem is these characters are very familiar to movie audiences everywhere. They are recognizable as typical standby stereotypes: the hard-edged silent character and his chatterbox sidekick. Even worse, they’re familiar to Jackson and Levy as well.

They seem to be playing farces of themselves and past characters. Jackson is as acquainted with the hardened, streetwise, man’s man as Levy is with the pathetically inept and neurotic everyman.

“The Man” does manage some funny moments involving the personality differences in the characters, though. One can only imagine Levy being excited about teeth implants and whiteners in another life. It hearkens back to his quirkiness exhibited in Christopher Guest “mockumentaries.”

The movie also shies away from playing off the characters’ racial differences, instead focusing on their occupational and city mouse/country mouse discrepancies. Unfortunately, however, it eventually reverts to the standby body humor and slapstick comedy in an attempt for laughs.

“The Man” is nothing that hasn’t been seen by audiences before. It simply fills a spot in the fall lineup of movie releases and gets lost with its predecessors in the buddy genre.

Although Jackson is Jackson and Levy is Levy, they can’t save the film from its thin, formulaic plot. “The Man” is one film to which the audience should stick it.

1 1/2 out of 5

“The Man”

New Line Cinema

Director: Les Mayfield

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Eugene Levy

Length: 83 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, rude dialogue and some violence