Review: 2 out of 4
Facing the unenviable task of following one of the biggest movies of all time, as well as unfair comparison to the Trayvon Martin shooting, “The Watch” was basically gonna rest on the likable charisma of it’s lead actors.
This is the type of R rated comedy you like to see from Stiller, Vaughn, and Hill but even for them, this is a comedy that feels largely innocuous.
Set in Glenview, Ohio, it starts with the bloody death of a security guard at Costco. Its manager, Evan (Ben Stiller), is appalled something like this can happen in the community he loves and so begins a neighborhood watch along with three other ne’er-do-wells to stop the violence.
They are Franklin (Jonah Hill), unstable and looking for entry into the police, Bob (Vince Vaughn), a family guy who just wants some male bonding in his life, and Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade), a Brit whose hoping this can satisfy a long running porn fantasy of his. It doesn’t take long before the boys discover that aliens have invaded and are stealing human skin.
That’s it in a nutshell.
All four actors are basically playing types in Seth Rogen’s (along with writing partner Evan Goldberg and Jared Stern) comedy-thriller mash-up script. It kinda reminded me of his “Green Hornet”; a few chuckle worthy bits sprinkled into a movie no one seems to care much about.
Director Akiva Shaffer sets a creepy tone and the ending is wild fun, but you can’t do much with a script that’s tiresomely consumed with the penis and profanity other than actual jokes, or alien effects that look completely ripped off from the “Alien” series.
What “The Watch”amounts to is a cruder but much less witty take on “Men in Black.”
