The Watch

 

Ben Stiller finds another teen who thought Night at the Museum sucked.

(2012) Comedy (20th Century Fox) Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, Rosemarie DeWitt, Will Forte, Mel Rodriguez, Doug Jones, Erin Moriarty, Nicholas Braun, R. Lee Ermey, Joe Nunez, Liz Cackowski, Johnny Pemberton, Billy Crudup, Sharon Gee. Directed by Akiva Schaffer

 

There are things that define a neighborhood that we seem to have lost sight of for the most part in the 21st century. Neighborhoods were once places where neighbors looked out for one another; where we shared lives with those who lived around us. Those kinds of neighborhoods are becoming increasingly rare.

Not in Glenview, Ohio though and that’s why Evan (Stiller) loves it so much there. He and his wife Abby (DeWitt) emigrated from New York to escape the cold, impersonal big city life and find a place where they could raise their children the right way – not that they have any children quite yet but they’re working on it.

When a security guard (Nunez) is gruesomely murdered in the Costco that Evan is managing, that galvanizes Evan. He has already founded a running club and a Spanish club in his neighborhood; now it’s time for something a little more useful – a neighborhood watch. The police, in the person of Sgt. Bressman (Forte), are doing little to find the killer and in fact Bressman thinks Evan is a strong suspect.

However, his neighborhood is less enthusiastic – only three other guys show up to the meeting that he calls. Bob (Vaughn) is a contractor with an epic man-cave who sees the Watch as an opportunity to hang out with the guys and drink plenty of beer. Franklin (Hill) is a bit of a nutcase who failed the psychological tests in order to join the Glenview Police Department; he lives with his mom and longs for police-like action. Then there’s Jamarcus (Ayoade) who sees the Neighborhood Watch as a means to meet women. Not exactly the battalion of crime fighters Evan was looking for.

Still, they are at least willing to play along for the most part, although much of their crime work has beer involved, and much talk of male penises. Bob and Evan start to bond in an odd way; Evan confesses that the reason he and Abby haven’t been able to conceive a child is because he’s sterile; Bob expresses his frustration over his teenage daughter Chelsea’s (Moriarty) increasing infatuation for Jason (Braun), a super-arrogant teen with designs on just one thing – the thing most teenage boys have designs on.

In the meantime, their investigation is leading them to the killer – and that killer isn’t local. And by not local, I mean not of this earth. When their beloved Glenview looks to be ground zero for an alien invasion, can these four screw-ups suck it up and become earth’s last line of defense?

Veteran SNL director Schaffer has a script co-written by Seth Rogen to work from but this isn’t one of his better efforts. Mostly what the problem is here is the unevenness. The movie has some genuinely funny moments, but not of the sort that will leave you sore from laughter as the better comedies will. The sci-fi aspects are for the most part pretty cheesy; why does every alien have to have lime green goo dripping from them? Just saying.

In any case, the two don’t mix well. At times we have some pretty odd moments of a joke in the middle of a serious scene that cheapens the drama; at others, a more dramatic episode in the middle of some of the more really funny moments. The effect is to keep the audience off-balance and not in a good way.

Stiller, Hill, Ayoade and particularly Vaughn are some of the most talented comic actors on the planet and they actually perform pretty well here. Vaughn is memorable even though his shtick is pretty much the same one he usually uses – the loud and aggressive manly sort with a heart of gold – we see the latter most clearly in his relationship with his daughter which is, as most dad-teenage daughter relationships are is a bit on the love-hate side. However, the relationship is depicted here a bit simplistically.

And what’s the deal with all the phallic references? There are so many references to the male sex organ that you have to wonder if there’s some sort of fetish being played out here. Hey, I’m as proud of my equipment as the next guy but sheez, I don’t feel the need to mention it quite so often.

So what we have here is a sci-fi comedy with some talented people in it (and lest we forget, the very sexy DeWitt who has some nice moments here) and simply not living up to its own potential. As much as I like Vaughn, Stiller and company, I think that talent like theirs deserves more than just an onslaught of dick jokes to deliver. So do we.

REASONS TO GO: There are some funny moments. Vaughn is one of my favorite comic actors at the moment.  

REASONS TO STAY: Much of the humor feels forced. Serious and funny stuff don’t flow well, leading to some jarring moments.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a lot of sexual content and a bit of sci-fi violence. The language is universally foul.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was originally titled Neighborhood Watch but the title was changed due to sensitivity over the Trayvon Martin shooting.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/30/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 15% positive reviews. Metacritic: 35/100. The reviews are uniformly negative.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Night at the Museum

COSTCO LOVERS: Evan is the manager at the Costco and the climax takes place there; as you might expect there are several jokes about bulk buying throughout the film.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Sympathy for Delicious

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I Love You, Man

Jason Segel and Paul Rudd share a bro-mantic moment.

(DreamWorks) Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin, Jon Favreau, Jaime Pressly, Lou Ferrigno. Directed by John Hamburg

In this Age of Information, we have invented terms that didn’t exist before for relationships that had no name before. When two guys become obsessed with one another in a non-sexual way, it’s called a “bromance.” While there have been plenty of movies about male bonding, this one is the first to use the term, at least in its marketing.

Peter Klaven (Rudd) is an L.A. realtor who is looking to make his mark by selling Lou Ferrigno’s (playing himself) home. The commission he’d receive would give him enough cash to develop a property of his own and hopefully set him up for success. He has a fiancée, Zooey (Jones) that he adores and who is his best friend.

Peter is also a bit uptight and perhaps the least cool person in Los Angeles, a place where cool rules. Peter is somewhat metrosexual, and has always been more comfortable with women than with men. In fact, he has no male friends to be the best man at his wedding, a fact pointed out by his gay brother Robbie (Samberg) who is his dad’s (Simmons) best friend.

It turns out Zooey has some concerns about this as well, so Peter decides to go out on a series of “man-dates” to find himself a best man-friend. Initially, it goes horribly. He goes to a poker game run by Barry (Favreau), the husband of Zooey’s best friend Denise (Pressly), but winds up irritating Barry the Blowhard by winning at poker (and every other competition) despite having absolutely no idea what he’s doing, and finishing up the night by throwing up on Barry.

Other dates go soundly wrong as well, as Peter is mistaken for gay and other predictable results. It isn’t until another open house for the Ferrigno property takes place when Peter meets Sydney Fife (Segel) who is there for the free food that things finally begin to look up. Sydney’s insights and genuine free spirit strike a chord in Peter and they wind up exchanging numbers, which leads to some sweet hanging out.

Sydney has a nice little house a block away from Venice Beach, but we never see the inside of it. What we do see is Sydney’s “man cave,” a converted garage in the backyard where Sydney keeps his toys; a drum kit, flat-screen TV, recliner, lava lamps and the sort of things that bachelors like to keep in their homes to make them look cluttered and man-comfortable – and the sorts of things that go away once they get married.

Sydney and Peter share a love for the progressive rock trio Rush (a favorite of mine too, I have to admit) and other things to bond over and soon Peter is spending more time with Sydney than he is with Zooey. It looks like Peter has found his best man, but is he going to have a wedding to use him for?

Hamburg and company have almost surely studied the Judd Apatow method of modern film comedy, because this movie could easily have been made by Apatow, who has Knocked Up and Superbad on his resume, among others. There is enough crudeness to make it edgy but not enough to make it raunchy.

Rudd is one of the funniest guys you’ve never heard of. He is quite possibly the best comic character actor working today. He can take a character like Peter, find out the things that make him funny and underplay him just enough so that he doesn’t necessarily stand out, but you leave the theater finding that most of the best laughs were his.

In fact there were plenty of funny moments here, although there were also times that it seemed like the filmmakers were trying to force things a little bit. I get that guys talk like “Dude Dudingham” “The Great Bro-bowski” back and forth ad nauseum, but it doesn’t have to go on over and over again. We get it.

One other note; while I realize that being mistaken for gay has some humor potential, it made for some awkward stereotyping that I didn’t find funny. While there are plenty of bitchy gay men out there, I thought that some of the jokes in this area went over the line into the offensive zone. A little sensitivity might have been in order here.

But then again, if you’re overly sensitive you probably shouldn’t go to a comedy. The point of a comedy is that you should be able to laugh at yourself and if you can’t do that you might need therapy of a different sort. There is certainly plenty to laugh at here, just not as much as I was led to believe by the critics. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for this. Oh well.

WHY RENT THIS: More of a “bro-mantic” comedy than a romantic comedy. Some genuinely funny moments. A credibly authentic look at male bonding.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the humor is a bit forced. The gay jokes are somewhat repugnant.

FAMILY VALUES: The language here is a bit rough for the younger sorts. There are also some fairly crude situations which make this unsuitable for children.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: J.K. Simmons’ character is named Oswald. In the HBO series “Oz” (which co-starred Simmons), the name of the prison the show was set in was Oswald State Correctional Facility.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: Nothing listed.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Crazy Heart