Too much of everything

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

With some of the most laughably bad dialog I've ever heard in a big screen film, this is perhaps the nadir in the career of everybody involved. Even Liza Minnelli's most sympathetic fans will be tempted to laugh out loud as she prepares to visit a client looking as she just got off stage at the Palace Theater. Of course, she's not a cabaret or concert performer; She's involved in the world's oldest profession, and I'm not talking about carpentry. Liza talks non-stop in this, and her character of Della (as in street walker) is dumber than a box of her signature hair style. If that doesn't give away who she is here, that's really enough to make you feel sorry for her, because it is obvious that she is being paid to humiliate herself. When Liza starts mentioning Broadway shows she was in, all gay men may be in camp heaven, but the rest of the audience is cringing. To add into the camp, Dionne Warwick is tossed in a pointless cameo as Liza's madame. There's a very violent opening where Liza's hooker goes to see her client and ends up at the wrong door, then is shot at and later stabbed. Certainly no lucky lady in this one, reunited with both Burt Reynolds and Robby Benson from that 1975 comedy that was critically panned but made a small profit. This is a complete disaster, and I'm sure that if Gene Hackman was offered a part in this, he was glad he turned it down after reading the reviews. Burt is the fired cop who protects Liza after her attack, and Benson and Bernie Casey are his old pals who aide him to keep Liza safe. The setting here is Chicago, although I bet most of the location footage was stock Chicago shots with Burt and Liza tossed in. The funniest moment has Liza walking nervously through a very "Studio 54" like dance club surrounded by every element of society you can imagine. I bet the extras on this set have dozens of stories to tell!There are some films that you have to watch through to realize how bad they are and others which tell you from the start. "Rent a Cop" is one of the later, perhaps not a disaster for Burt's career, having moments that just reek of ludicrousness. Along with the unfairly maligned "Arthur II", this practically killed Liza's film career. She is not at all believable as a hooker like Jane Fonda was in "Klute", Kathleen Turner was in "Crime of Passion", and fellow musical diva Barbra Streisand was in "Nuts", released at the same time as this. Liza was of course going through all sorts of problems, and seems at times to talk nonstop continuously to work through them. As a cult fan of "Lucky Lady", I can say that it has great moments in spite of being mediocre, but after seeing (and hearing) Liza in this, I wish I could change the title to "Mute Lady".

In 1981, Burt Reynolds did a movie called SHARKEY'S MACHINE. He played a cop who is demoted to the vice squad after a shootout with a drug dealer results in several deaths. In RENT-A-COP, he plays a cop who is reduced to working as a security guard when a masked killer botches a drug bust and kills his fellow police officers. In the former movie, Burt watches a hooker, played by Rachel Ward, whom he hopes will help him nab a crimelord. In the latter movie, a hooker, played by Liza Minnelli, joins forces with Burt to track down the killer. Both of these movies co-starred Bernie Casey. The plots of both movies seem familiar, and Liza is not really believable as a hooker, but RENT-A-COP is just one of those Eighties movies that is far more fun to watch on TV rather than the big screen.

This 1988 movie was shown recently on a cable channel. We wanted to see another film, which supposedly was starting, but because a mix up, Rent-a-Cop, was shown in that time slot. Never having seen it when it was commercially released, we took a chance at it. Bad decision.One wonders what possessed the people behind the picture to go ahead with "Rent-a-Cop", or how they sold it to the studio behind the distribution. It appears this movie misfired big time. This film doesn't add anything new to its genre. It's totally predictable, as once the basic premise is shown, we know how it will end.Burt Reynolds plays a wooden Church. This actor can do better, but who knows what was going on behind the scenes, or perhaps the direction given to him by Jerry London, had the opposite effect. Mr. Reynolds has one expression throughout the movie. He just doesn't register any emotion at all.Lisa Minnelli, as the hooker who witnessed the original slaughter at the Chicago hotel, makes no sense at all. The romance between her Della and Church seems phony from the beginning. She and Mr. Reynolds play one dimensional characters.Don't waste your time with this turkey.

Didja know that, contrary to popular belief (and the Razzies), Liza-with-a-Z actually received rave reviews from Variety and the NEW YORK TIMES (!) for her performance in this otherwise utterly ordinary cop thriller. She's actually very funny in it, and Reynolds has his moments as well. There is an absolutely hysterical scene near the beginning with Burt as a security guard disguised as Santa in a department store, bantering with his new boss, an overly officious matron yammering about his failure to scrutinize his "policy manual."