'Hit & Run' Trailer - Dreadlocked Bradley Cooper Goes After Dax Shepard And Kristen Bell

With projects like Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines, David O. Russell's The Silver Linings Playbook, and Susanne Bier's Serena all coming up, The Hangover star Bradley Cooper looks poised to make the move into Serious Actor respectability. But he hasn't left broad comedy behind completely, or at least not yet. Cooper's next big-screen appearance will be as a dreadlocked ex-con in this summer's Hit & Run, a film written, starring, and co-directed by Dax Shepard. As you might guess, it looks pretty silly.

Shepard plays Charlie Bronson (ha ha), a former getaway driver who's now in the Witness Protection Program. A road trip with his girlfriend (Shepard's real-life fiancee Kristen Bell) takes a sour turn when they're chased by the feds as well as Charlie's past criminal associates (including Cooper and Michael Rosenbaum). Kristin Chenoweth, Beau Bridges, and Tom Arnold also star. Watch the first trailer after the jump.

[via Yahoo!]

Hit & Run doesn't look that bad, but I can't help thinking that all three of the leads deserve something better than "not that bad." Cooper, Bell, and Shepard have all done much better work elsewhere, and it's a shame to see their talents wasted in what appears to be a solidly mediocre, utterly forgettable action-comedy. Are stale jokes about prison rape and old-person sex really the best Shepard could come up with?

On the other hand, plenty of perfectly enjoyable films put out bad first trailers, so there's always the chance that the other 90 or so minutes that we haven't seen yet are much better. If you're curious to find out, Hit & Run gets hits theaters nationwide on August 24.

Charlie Bronson, a former getaway driver busts out of the Witness Protection Program to drive his girlfriend to Los Angeles so she can land her dream job. Their road trip grows awkwardly complicated, when they are chased by the feds, and increasingly dangerous, when Charlie's former gang of criminals enter the fray.