In “Central Intelligence,” Kevin Hart and the ubiquitous Dwayne Johnson star as former high school classmates who reunite as adults and wind up saving the world. I rolled my eyes at the unapologetically manufactured storyline, too, but mostly enjoyed the film, which is dumb but funny.
“Central Intelligence” opens 20 years ago during a high school rally in which Heart’s Calvin Joyner is voted the student of the year. As hundreds of seniors applaud, he starts to give an inspirational speech about what the future holds. Meanwhile, Johnson’s portly Robbie Weirdict (get it?) is taking a shower in the boy’s locker room. Four churls sneak up behind him, grab him, and toss him into the gymnasium, buck naked. As Robbie lands belly first and squeaks across the floor, the crowd erupts in laughter. Everyone but Calvin, that is, who gives Weirdict (ho ho) his jacket and allows him to retreat with a modicum of dignity.
“There’s no coming back from that,” the principal says. Only he’s wrong. After two decades of “working out six hours a day, every day,” Stone has transformed into a tower of muscle and bone. Calvin has undergone a transformation of sorts, too. Gone is the charismatic and confident high school jock, and in his place, a jaded, weary, middle-aged accountant has taken root. He is married to his irrepressibly pretty and loving high school sweetheart, though, so life can’t be ALL bad.
One day, Calvin receives a Facebook friend request from a Bob Stone, who’s actually Weirdict (snicker). Calvin accepts, and the next thing he knows, he’s getting together with his former classmate for a night on the town. Things with Robbie are not as they seem, though, and before Calvin knows it, he and Robbie are on the run from the CIA, and his former classmate is recruiting him to help find the person who stole the access codes to the U.S. military’s satellites. Robbie works for the CIA, but has been implicated in the murder of his partner and the theft of the codes, and he needs Calvin’s knack with numbers to crack the case.
I get the fantasy. As we approach life’s midriff, we begin to wonder what happened to the dreams of our youth. So I can’t knock the storyline, which puts Calvin in a position to be the hero he used to imagine he would be. But I can knock some of the movie’s bone-headed creative decisions.
One would be casting Heart as a straight man – and by that, I mean a largely humorless character. While I’m not a fan of Heart’s off-the-cuff improv, a lot of people think he’s very funny, and who I am to say they’re wrong? But even those people must be wondering what happened here. Whoever decided Heart should be a button-down type should be slapped on the wrist. I normally don’t condone corporal punishment, but that decision nearly killed the movie.
Thankfully, Johnson saves the day. Quite simply, he’s hilarious. He plays Robbie as a goofy high schooler in a grown-up body, someone who matured physically and is very good at his job, but who’s also awkward, nerdy, and hugely likeable in a teddy bear kind of way. I generally like Johnson in movies, but I’ve never spent an entire film laughing at nearly everything he says and does. For my money, he’s worth the price of admission to “Central Intelligence.”
The “action” (air quotes) would not be worth going to the theater. I know I’ve complained about poorly choreographed gunfights before, but director Rawson Marshall Thurber was just plain lazy. Rooms full of people with automatic weapons are spraying bullets like water from a hose, and no one gets hit. There’s even a scene in which Johnson and another character are only a few feet from each other, and both empty a full clip, and neither of them gets hurt. A reader recently told me shooting someone with a gun isn’t easy (I didn’t ask how he knew this), but c’mon.
The misuse of Heart and the eye-rollingly bad aim of the CIA’s best aside, “Central Intelligence” offers a decent time at the movies. Johnson really does save the day, and I had a good time watching him do it.
Three stars out of four. Rated PG-13 for crude and suggestive humor, some nudity, action violence, and brief strong language.
David Laprad is the assistant editor of the Hamilton County Herald and an award-winning columnist and photographer. Contact him at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.