"The Watch” is so bad, I was embarrassed to be in the theater when the lights came on at the end. I could have left while the theater was dark, like the man sitting in front of me did about halfway through. But I have a job to do, and sometimes that means being humiliated to spare you from the same fate.
The persistent juvenile vulgarity didn’t offend me, even though I’m not a fan of it. Rather, the painfully bad improvised dialogue, the poor casting choices, the pointless subplot and the ridiculous storyline had me staring at the screen in slack-jawed puzzlement. How did this thing get made?
The set up: A security guard is killed during the night shift at a Costco. The next day, the manager, Evan, played by Ben Stiller, arrives to find police crawling all over the place. No one thought to call him, nor do the filmmakers explain who found the guy, since Evan is there to open the store, but never mind. Outraged at the death of his friend, Evan announces the formation of a neighborhood watch at a high school football game. Three losers respond: Bob, Franklin and Jamarcus. From there, mayhem and inane improvisation ensues.
A sample: The guys have made their first citizen’s arrest – a teenager who lured them to the football stadium to pelt them with rotten eggs. They take the kid into the police station, where they interrogate him before turning him over:
Evan: “Look at me.”
Franklin: “Look at me.”
Evan: “Look at him and listen to me.”
Franklin: “Look at me and listen to him.”
Evan: “Look at both of us.”
Franklin: “Look at neither of us and understand no one.”
Other scenes are worse. Most seem as though the filmmakers built them around an idea – this is the scene in which X has to happen – and then the actors jump in front of the camera and start rifting off each other. In most cases, that involves saying the dirtiest things they can think of and taking it to jaw dropping lengths of idiocy. Case in point: the scene in which Vaughn pees into a beer can in a car. Loved the mushroom bit – NOT!
Moving on to the casting. With a cast like this, viewers can’t be faulted for expecting a better movie. Stiller can be hilarious, but here, he inexplicably plays the straight guy. That leaves the laughs to Vince Vaughn as Bob, Jonah Hill as Franklin and some guy named Richard Ayoade as Jamarcus.
Vaughn and Hill can be funny, too, but here, they serve warmed up leftovers from previous movies, especially Vaughn, who’s played an obnoxious middle-aged teenager in more movies than I can count. What happened to the energetic, edgy Vaughn of “Clay Pigeons?” Hill has “Moneyball” and the overlooked “Cyrus” to his credit, but here, he plays the same kind of character he played in “The Sitter,” “Superbad” and “Knocked Up.” You may have liked those movies; then rent them instead of seeing this dud.
Stuck in the middle of this mess is a subplot about Evan and his wife trying to have a baby. Would you consider it a spoiler if I tell you they can’t because Evan doesn’t produce enough swimmers? The movie gets serious every time Evan and his wife are on the screen, which creates odd pacing issues and an uneven tone.
This brings me to the storyline, which involves these four dimwits discovering and stopping an alien invasion. Material like this can be funny, like a throwback to the old movies in which Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein or the Wolfman. As a kid, I liked those films; they were entertaining. This is not. There’s no creative spark.
Maybe you’re thinking I’m a stick in the mud for not just kicking back and having fun. What’s wrong with a few dirty jokes, a silly plot and four actors goofing off? That’s not the issue; the issue is their fun does not translate into ours.
Rated R for strong sexual content, pervasive language and violent images. One star out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.