Reuniting beyond Fox’s “New Girl” (2011-present), Jake Johnson (“Drinking Buddies,” 2013) and Damon Wayans Jr. (“The Other Guys,” 2010) star in director Luke Greenfield’s (“The Girl Next Door,” 2004) action comedy “Let’s Be Cops.” In the film, longtime friends and roommates Ryan (Johnson) and Justin (Wayans Jr.), whose lives are in limbo, consider leaving Los Angeles for Ohio when a college reunion they attend — in which they’re dressed as cops — unexpectedly grants them the attention and respect they desperately seek. Their choice to keep up the act beyond the reunion drives the rest of the comedy.

On paper, the logline sounds like a surefire winner, and the pairing of Johnson and Wayans Jr. should have been enough to guarantee 104 minutes of Real Fun. Instead, what we get is exactly what the marketing warned us about: Real Trouble. Both leads do what they can, but their performances are in spite of, not thanks to, the script from Greenfield and Nick Thomas (Playboy TV’s “Canoga Park,” 2007-2008). For a film that wants to riff on the buddy-cop formula, the so-called ‘buddies’ have zero chemistry; it’s as if each actor wandered in from a completely different movie.

Ryan and Justin are basically walking, talking tropes, dropped in for the sake of it rather than to serve the story. Ryan is your standard-issue, self-loathing, cocky, 30-something alcoholic loser, while Justin is The Sidekick^TM, whose only job is to follow behind with a metaphorical mop. There’s nothing to latch onto with either of them, because there’s nothing beneath the surface. The result? Clichés that stick out like a sore thumb. “Let’s Be Cops” leans hard on tired gags and a weirdly sexist streak that feels like it was beamed in from the heyday of Spike TV. Everything else is just filler with no flair—the filmmakers keep tossing in random bits, hoping something will land. What we end up with is a chaotic mess of let’s-try-this-and-that-and-maybe-this-too, until it’s all just too much to handle.

The supporting cast doesn’t fare any better. Nina Dobrev (The CW’s “The Vampire Diaries,” 2009-present), Natasha Leggero (“He’s Just Not That Into You,” 2009), and Keegan-Michael Key (Comedy Central’s “Key & Peele,” 2012-present) are all talented, but here they’re trapped in roles so redundant you start to feel bad for them. The story itself is like gum stuck to your shoe: the more you try to stretch it, the more irritating it gets, until you’re just left wishing you’d never stepped in it.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about “Let’s Be Cops” is knowing that Greenfield can actually deliver, as he did with “The Girl Next Door.” None of that talent shows up here. This is a comedy as dumb as a box of rocks, with a second half that completely falls apart and a cast that can’t do much to save the day. If you’re just looking to kill some time and you like the comedians involved, you might squeeze out a few laughs. For everyone else, it’s all Real Bad. Let’s just cross our fingers there’s never a Real Sequel.