I’m almost certain that the creators of Coffee & Kareem started with the title and then worked out a movie that’d fit it. The Netflix original comedy launched yesterday, showing the adventures of police officer James Coffee and 12-year-old boy Kareem Manning. They hate each other’s guts, but for some totally uncontrived reason end up working together to battle some kind of criminal network. They’re the classic odd couple.
Despite some mixed reviews, Coffee & Kareem seems to be going down a storm with viewers, with many folks finding it to be hilarious. And here’s just a selection of what’s being said on social media:
Lmfaooo coffee & Kareem ???
— UPPERCASE ? (@LIYMCAPITAL) April 3, 2020
Lmaooo!!! Coffee&Kareem funny asf❗️?
— OkayNana♒️ (@FemaleGotti1) April 3, 2020
Coffee & Kareem on Netflix is so dumb ?
— Elaine (@Kay_Vuitton) April 3, 2020
Coffee & Kareem is funny as hell ?
— ty ? (@_tylaaaar) April 3, 2020
Lool this movie coffee & Kareem is crazy lol
— Marry.Wanna (@c00kie001) April 3, 2020
If you want to have a good laugh please go watch Coffee & Kareem on Netflix ?????
— Mokgadi.M? (@iittssmokki) April 3, 2020
Coffee & Kareem on Netflix last night had me dying ??
— Franklin Saint (@Stretch_BCoolin) April 4, 2020
Lmao coffee & Kareem was funny as shit,
— Basic ??♀️ (@_GangstaK) April 4, 2020
But it’s not all praise. Some (and it seems you can include most movie critics in this) see Coffee & Kareem as the cinematic equivalent of cyanide.
Watching #Coffee&Kareem on @NetflixUK and I have never wanted to punch a kid in the face more then this character Kareem.
— Mich'el Pierre (@MPGentleman) April 3, 2020
“Coffee & Kareem” is a funny answer to a jackbox question. Not a good name for an actual series.
— ???? ??????? (@JoeHasSpoken) April 3, 2020
Coffee & Kareem on Netflix has to be one of the worst movies I’ve seen since I been born.
— That guy who makes those movies? (@_DashawnJ_) April 3, 2020
Coffee & Kareem is more boilerplate action-comedy for the streaming masses: https://t.co/2TEh86J5es pic.twitter.com/9F8eI60EfI
— CultMTL (@CultMTL) April 3, 2020
That last one, in particular, rubs me up the wrong way with its snooty dismissal of “the streaming masses.” Read the room guys, there’a an extremely depressing pandemic going on and thousands of people across the world are dying every day. Can you blame folks stuck indoors for wanting to escape that by watching a pretty ridiculous sounding comedy about a mismatched cop/kid pairing?
Besides, it’s those “masses” that fund the low audience artsy-fartsy stuff that Netflix also releases. I’m not going to sit here and claim that Coffee & Kareem is some kind of classic, even in the “dumb comedies” genre, but I don’t want to live in a world where low-paid comedy writers can’t pay their rent by putting two nouns together, pretending they’re realistic surnames and spinning a quick n’ dirty Netflix original out of it.
Let’s hope Coffee & Kareem does well, because who’s to say there shouldn’t be a sequel? And, if a Netflix commissioning editor happens to be reading this, I suggest John Coffee and Kareem Manning get paired with a Great Dane called Sugar for their next adventure. You can put my cheque in the post.
