Chimp Cop

By Elyce PhillipsChimp Cop

When a business mogul goes missing and a man shows up dead, Detectives Chimp Cop and Tijuana Goldberg are on the case. Adam Knox, Ben Vernel, Timothy Clark and Rosie Vernel ham it up as a cast of good cops, bad cops, rogues and dames. It’s everything you love about a good detective drama, done on about 1/100th of the budget.

Chimp Cop is a loving parody of detective noir. It feels heavily influenced by Naked Gun, with a dose of Raymond Chandler in there for good measure. There are a lot of cheesy puns, plenty of stupid sight gags, and enough accents to cover every single cop show stereotype. The Chimp Cop team throw themselves into their performance wholeheartedly – to the point that there were probably a few prop-based injuries on stage. There aren’t a whole heap of bells and whistles in this show, but they work well with what they’ve got. A video screen is used to good effect to set the tone at the start. The character transitions could be clunky in the small space, but a few ad-libbed lines smooth things over.

Chimp Cop is a little rough around the edges, but there is some absolute gold in this hour of sketch. A graphic visual stand-in for a sex scene was…memorable, and an extended video montage about friendship was hands-down the funniest thing I’ve seen at the Festival so far. It sent me into one of those slightly terrifying hysterical laughs where you momentarily fear that you may never stop laughing. It’s the kind of unhinged madness that you want in late-night comedy.

Chimp Cop is incredibly silly and a whole lot of fun. If you’re a fan of cop dramas, there’s plenty of laughs to be had, and if you’re not, you’ll probably still get a chuckle out of the nonsense of it all.

Chimp Cop is on at the Imperial Hotel until April 18
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2015/season/shows/chimp-cop