LM23 Rating: Could’ve been a really good dumb funny movie…
When I’m selecting a random movie to watch, it helps me press play if there’s a lot of stars in it. Even if it has a very low Rotton Tomatoes rating, I’ll still give it a try because why would so many stars want to be in this movie?
The Watch had a potential real dumb funny movie vibe to it as the hero image promoting the movie has Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and some random guy I’ve seen on Graham Norton or maybe it was Conan, Richard Ayoade, standing in confidence with matching blue uniforms. It looks like one of those really funny stupid movies like The Internship or Grown Ups.
The Watch started off with the same vibes as Grown Ups. We see Ben Stiller’s character, Evan, jogging through his idyllic suburb. He’s an overachieving Costco manager who wants to spread his idealism by proactively befriending people of color and speaking up at town council meetings. He’s even very proud of himself that he helped and hired a new American named Antonio as the night security guard.
In a very unexpected non-funny twist, Antonio is murdered very violently during one of his shifts. And in a forced emotive turn, Evan vows to avenge Antonio’s death by forming a neighborhood watch group. He recruits his neighborhood buddies Bob (Vaughn), Franklin (Hill), and Jamarcus (Ayoade).
And up to this point, the movie is actually quite entertaining. The four average buddies even get custom made jackets to wear during their first stakeout in the parking lot at the Costco. But signs of disappointment start to show itself when the movie starts with the toilet humor. And the toilet humor persists with actual jokes about human fluids and other sensitive body parts.
But before things really go down the toilet, the movie still chugs along. In a very unexpected twist, the watch guys discover that it’s an alien that most likely murdered Antonio. And we see the alien. The alien looks like a dollar store version of the alien in Alien. There seems to still be hope for the film when the guys are now all paranoid that aliens are amongst them in their nice suburban neighborhood. And this is where I think the film, directed by Akiva Schaffer of the Lonely Island fame, and written in part by Seth Rogen, is making that turn to prove to us that it’s just another dumb and not funny college frat boy movie.
But that low expectation is fleeting when the watch team separates during a stakeout at a creepy neighbor’s house one evening. The creepy neighbor is played by Billy Crudup who shows up with his smarmy smirk and a tad too greasy slicked back hair. Evan and Jamarcus stays behind to investigate while Bob and Franklin go to bust up a teen party where Bob’s daughter is at. It turns out that the creepy neighbor is not an alien, but he’s hosting a neighborhood orgy. This orgy isn’t even funny, but it’s out right NC-17 rated which kills the funniness of the film. And not to be out done by the antics Bob and Franklin are up to, we’re forced to witness underage debauchery and even borderline pedophilia. The movie could have passed if these two scenes were dropped completely and we focused more on the primitive investigation skills of the neighborhood watch. They had some success when they found a weird ball that could shoot lasers and then when they found an actual alien which they brought home to analyze.
The movie really loses its charm when the gang raids Franklin’s room to grab some guns and return to the Costco which is the epicentre of the incoming alien invasion. Oh, right, they only know this because Jamarcus happens to be an alien. But don’t worry, he’s on their side. It also turns out that the guy Bob’s daughter was about to get it on with is also an alien. I won’t even get into how the aliens are killed, but you can guess which body part does the trick.
So unfortunately, this is a movie to skip. It had a lot of promise and both Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn do their best to play the straight men in this movie. They act with empathy and realness as regular schmoes who want to find out what’s happening in their neighborhood. But The Watch is no Grown Ups and I’m disappointed that such a stellar cast was wasted.
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