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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 20 August 2012
This a movie review of THE WATCH. |
“You talk to Abby. She married you, not your dead jizz,” Bob (Vince Vaughn) to Evan (Ben Stiller) about his infertility.
That statement exemplifies the humour in THE WATCH. If it can go for the lowest common denominator it appears to quickly switch into the default gear. If characters are able to blow up a live cow with an alien laser gun, or if one of the leads decides to rip off extra terrestrial genitals, the movie goes there. You may think that sounds funny, and on paper, it could’ve done – however in final execution the crude witlessness mounts up. We are not in SOUTH PARK or FAMILY GUY territories.
That statement exemplifies the humour in THE WATCH. If it can go for the lowest common denominator it appears to quickly switch into the default gear. If characters are able to blow up a live cow with an alien laser gun, or if one of the leads decides to rip off extra terrestrial genitals, the movie goes there. You may think that sounds funny, and on paper, it could’ve done – however in final execution the crude witlessness mounts up. We are not in SOUTH PARK or FAMILY GUY territories.
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The four leads (Stiller, Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade) are likeable comedians, and wring as much from the material as possible, though they should’ve known better. The last time the first two teamed up, was the hilarious DODGEBALL; the mockery of sports cinema tropes is not replicated with the tackling of the alien invasion genre. Mixing suburbia with hostile creatures could have been GREMLINS good. THE WATCH isn’t funny enough, and there are zero thrills.
Stiller’s Evan is an anally retentive department store manager, heavily involved in random community projects. His blind spot is other’s reactions to his tunnel vision, in particular his neglected wife Abby (Rosemarie Dewitt). After Evan’s store night watchman is killed, he puts together a neighbourhood watch to protect local homes and aid the bungling police (headed by the belligerent Will Forte), in discovering the perpetrator. Suburbanites versus aggressive interstellar travellers, who like their BATTLESHIP counterparts frustratingly lack nous.
Only three volunteer to join Evan: Bob (Vaughn), Franklin (Hill) and Jamarcus (Ayoade). A greater assortment of odd-bods barely could’ve been assembled. While their social ineptitude stops THE WATCH from being monotonous, the japes never really get started, and the mildly amusing tomfoolery detracts from the potential carnage and imagination that might have ensued had that route been chosen.
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