MINI-REVIEW: The Watch

MOVIE
The Watch

CAST
Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn,
Jonah Hill, Richard Ayodade

RATING
R

RELEASE
July 27, 2012

DIRECTOR
Akiva Schaffer

STUDIO
20th Century Fox

RUNNING TIME
1 hour 42 minutes




STARS
**







REVIEW:

It seems Hollywood believes that this generation only finds jokes about anything involving sex to be the selling point to any comedy. 'The Watch' is the latest victim of this horrid "money-making" idea. The concept for the film is actually very interesting. Think about it: four average-joe neighbors have to defend their town from an alien invasion. If this was a well written comedy with some raunchy moments but nothing too extreme, 'The Watch' then might have been a decent, maybe even great comedy. Unfortunately, the movie turns from something interesting to a 100 minute non-stop sex joke with a long commercial for the store Costco spliced in there. With all of the talent behind this movie, it's really disappointing to see this film end up being just another piece of comedy trash.

After his good friend is mysteriously murdered by someone or something, Evan forms a local Neighborhood Watch to come together once a week and get away from the family/friends in order to serve justice in their hometown. Since Evan has already formed local clubs in the past, bossing more people around for his own sake should be a no brainer. That is until the recruits come, who are mostly in the group to get away from their family and get drunk with their fellow group members. Diving further into the mystery of this murder, the four guys soon find out that the murderer isn't even from Earth. The murderer is a member of an elite group of aliens that have adapted to society and are among us. They also happen to be planning on destroying Earth. R rated alien sex jokes and great special effects ensure from there, as these four guys now have to defend their town from this group of aliens.

The four lead actors are incredibly talented comedians. In this movie they aren't given anything funny to do, other than one scene involving Vince Vaughn and some Russian Dolls. Akiva Schaffer, the director of this movie, has a lot more talent that wasn't displayed here at all. The writers of this film, Seth Rogen and Evan Golberg, are really talented writers, but in here they just took a PG rated story and added non-stop penis jokes to make it R rated. The story is clichéd and didn't surprise me in any way imaginable.  An unfortunate thing about the aliens in this movie is that they actually look surprisingly stellar for this type of movie, and they should have been in something more useful to Hollywood rather than this comedy.  I expected a much more entertaining and smarter movie considering the talent behind this project, but unfortunately this film is sloppy, dumb, and unfunny. This is more of a midnight movie that one would pop in to watch with a bunch of their friends and just watch for the heck of it. Audiences probably won't remember this film, come September, and that's how 'The Watch' should be. The title of this film is ironic, because not watching this movie would probably be better for the human mind.