The Watch

My Grade:  D+

Another summer action/comedy.  Another movie that includes aliens where you may not expect them.  Another movie about men, by men, for men.  But it’s funny.  And it has a pretty good cast.  But that’s all it really is... pretty good.  I was entertained, but not blown away.  It’s a good matinee or Redbox selection.

On one hand, I had high hopes going into this movie because of the cast.  Jonah Hill has always been funny, but he has really proven that he can act ever since he got skinny.  Also, Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn being back together is a good thing.  I missed them since Dodgeball... and (sort of) Anchorman and Zoolander.  They make comedy magic together so it’s great to see them together again.  To be honest, I was only excited about those three... not Richard Ayoade... because I had no idea who he was... because I’m not British.  He is very funny, though!

The cast is what makes this film enjoyable.  The script is not.  It’s penned by the unknown Jared Stern and it’s just alright.  His initial script was rewritten by Seth Rogen and his writing partner, Evan Goldberg, which I’m sure greatly improved it.  It is logical and an interesting enough story to keep our attention.  It even has a decent twist, but the characters aren’t super deep.  They all are dealing with personal crises that many suburban men can relate to, which allows us to put ourselves in their shoes; however, there’s not tons of emotional meat here.  This might be, in part, due to the directing.  I’m not saying that it is poorly directed but it’s not a masterpiece by any means.  Akiva Schaffer is really only known as part of The Lonely Island and for directing a lot of SNL digital shorts and similar sketch comedy type fair.  His only other feature is Hot Rod which is essentially a feature length SNL digital short (and, in my opinion, too stupid to be enjoyed).  I love his digital shorts, but he should probably stick to directing those.

The action in this film is pretty good, though.  The comedy is better, but I was pleasantly surprised by how intense some of the action scenes were as I was watching it.  After watching it, though, the comedy is really what I remembered.  I didn’t, however, take away a lot of good one-liners like I did from great recent comedies such as Horrible Bosses. 

Another strong point of this film is its special effects.  Special effects have gotten very good in recent years so for a big budget movie to not have good special effects... well, they pretty much all do.  But the aliens look pretty real, the lasers and such look great, etc.  Visually, the film is strong with nothing that stands out in a good or bad way when it comes to lighting or cinematography.

Overall, this film is enjoyable for most of its 102 minutes but doesn’t do a lot of new things.  The cast is likable and they work well together but don’t expect to go away quoting the film.  It won’t be remembered for long, but it’s worth ‘the watch’... see what I did there?