By Matt Finley
At the very least, THE WATCH,
directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer (HOT ROD), is
sit-throughable.
Originally written by Jared Stern as a
family-baiting PG-13 sci-fi comedy, the film was later re-worked into
a hard-R lead-ventilated cuss generator by SUPERBAD scribes
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Certainly far less sci-fi than a
connect-the-dots buddy comedy, the film lurches between the
sentimental and the profane, offering plenty of comfy
sit-com-recycled domestic drama as a veritable cavalcade of dick
jokes tumble out beyond the point of diminishing returns.
And, yes, there are a few aliens. They
look sort of like nude, off-brand Predator blow-up dolls. They show
up maybe three times in limp action sequences between long stretches
of intermittently funny improvs and plot points that vacillate
between completely off the wall and exactly out of that last movie
you saw where a bunch of dudes hang out and have an allegedly zany
adventure.
It kicks off with a grisly murder –
the flaying of a Costco security guard. While most of the
McMansion-dappled housing development languor on through pool parties
and high school football games, Evan (Ben Stiller), a manager at
Costco and notorious local busybody, vows to hunt down the killer. So
he forms a neighborhood watch alongside the only three other people
who seem even mildly interested in bringing the violent, marauding
murderer to justice – Bob (Vince Vaughn), a lonely, (mostly) single
dad, Franklin (Jonah Hill), an unhinged police academy drop-out, and
Jamarcus (The IT Crowd’s Richard Aoyoade), a comically
stoic, undersexed divorcée. As Bob tangles with his pubescent
daughter and Evan evades the ovulating advances of his neglected
biological time bomb of a wife, the three uncover an alien plot to
overthrow Earth.
Stiller is in full type-A mode here,
lording over the watch like a Midwestern version of Greenberg – all
the frustrated neuroses and emotional constipation with none of the
cynicism. Vaughn is an anemic, less abrasive version of how I imagine
Vince Vaughn might just… kinda… be. Meanwhile, Hill’s character
– a hyperactive wanna-be cop who’s armed to the incisors and
living with his haggard mom – is the Saturday morning cartoon
version of Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt in OBSERVE AND REPORT.
Though it’s interesting to watch a
toned-down Vaughn, whose character, for once, serves as the moral
center of a film, its Aoyoade who really shines. Collapsing some
shamefully oversized comic writing into a deceptively cool and
understated performance, his character, if even just for reasons
of sheer tonal contrast, is certainly the film’s best. (By the way
– what’s up with this over-qualified British comedian side-kick
trend? see HALL PASS and BRIDESMAIDS for other recent
examples…)
Speaking of Brits, anyone expecting
anything akin to Joe Cornish’s brilliant and hilarious (also, in
light of the Tottenham riots, eerily prescient) ATTACK THE BLOCK
may want to down-shift their anticipation. Even ignoring THE
WATCH’s exile of its genre elements to the farthest back
burner, and it’s predilection for lazy crotch gags, I couldn’t
help but notice the stark socio-cultural differences between the two.
If ATTACK THE BLOCK - a film in which a group of
underprivileged British teenagers defend their housing project
against a (significantly better designed) alien threat – is about
consciously rising above the societal predestination perpetuated by
both sides of the class divide, THE WATCH sits lethargically
in the middle (well, upper-middle), portraying an insular slice
of oblivious Americana. They’re bored consumers who immediately
default to violence as a means by which to protect and, ultimately,
reinforce their unselfconscious privilege.
I’m not saying it’s morally
or culturally offensive – it just isn’t very compelling.
I understand that the main characters
are meant to seem heroic because they have the wherewithal to break
away from their La-Z-boys long enough to question the cost of
navel-gazing comfort, but it ignores the pitfalls of the other
extreme – middle-class paranoia and the self-destructive ignorance
of jingoism. Just look at the tragic Trayvon Martin shooting that
forced harried marketers to change the film’s title from
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH.
I couldn’t help but recall Joe
Dante’s THE ‘BURBS, a darkly comedic re-working of REAR
WINDOW that finds Tom Hanks’ suburban stereotype obsessed with
his odd new neighbors and their bizarre nocturnal activities.
Despite the fact that THE ‘BURBS is superior in both its
skewering of modern cul de sac living and its ability to build
suspense through comedy, both films make the mistake of concluding
that, while lurking threats to our lifestyle may dwell, unseen,
amongst us, those threats are geographically (THE WATCH) or
ideologically (THE ‘BURBS) foreign.
Even as Stiller and his posse bust caps
through a legion of insectoid interlopers, there are much more
insidious threats – menaces endemic to the very lifestyle
they are defending - that, unchecked and unmonitored, continue to
gnaw at the foundations of the suburban idyll. I’m not
suggesting they should’ve mounted a polemic on unemployment, carbon
emissions, public education or even bath salts, but, c’mon – a
paranoid, gun-toting militia, a corporate big box store and a couple
grumpy aliens... and we’re supposed to be most concerned about the
aliens? (2 ½ out of 4 stars)
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