User blog:Porterfield/The Watch - Review Roundup

The Watch was originally titled The Neighborhood Watch and the first trailer featured it's cast driving around the 'burbs, listening to Still D.R.E., while Jonah Hill pretends to shoot children, with his finger, out of the car window. Then Trayvon Martin was killed by Neighborhood Watch Captain George Zimmerman in Florida, and everything changed, from the film's title to the marketing strategy. 20th Century Fox started revealing and highlighting the enemies in the film- aliens- a plot point that otherwise would have come as a surprise to the audience.

Almost every writer to address The Watch has been focusing on this controversial history of the film, now more than ever following the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado last week. I personally believe that this movie should be analyzed strictly for its entertainment value. There is no reason to connect a script that was written years ago with news stories that occurred in the past couple of months. I don't blame the studio for changing the name to sell more tickets, but I find the audience that's less likely to see it based on a coincidental connection to a tragic current event to be utterly preposterous. Having said that, it seems that The Watch is not that entertaining, which is just sad when you really think about it. You would think a movie written by Seth Rogen and starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill would be a hilarious hit, but it's not. As you will find in the roundup of reviews below, the only bright spot of the entire film that critics can agree on is Richard Ayoade's emergence into the "big league" here stateside. Other than that, the reviews have been very sour for the overly crass and crude comedy.

Loved It
No professional film critics loved The Watch.

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Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times
Score: 2 out of 4 stars

The dialogue by Jared Stern and Seth Rogen benefits from the practiced comic timing of the actors, and by some astonishing verbal imagery. But I dunno. It's so determined to be crude, vulgar and offensive that after a while I grew weary. Abbott and Costello used to knock out funnier movies on this exact intellectual plane without using a single F, S, C, P or A word.

Roger Moore - K.C. Star
Score: 2.5 out of 4 stars

The plot is secondary here, an excuse to put the foursome in a soccer-mom-mobile, drinking, topping each other's jokes about urinating in a beer can and "sharing"... The bits are funnier than the movie that Rogen, co-writer Evan Goldberg ("Pineapple Express") and director and "Saturday Night Live" vet Akiva Schaffer ("Hot Rod") cook up around them.

Michael Phillips - Chicago Tribune
Score: 2 out of 4 stars

The formidable stars know how to muscle a script, any script, into giving up a few laughs. But it's Ayoade who brings something fresh. He appears to have wandered over from another film set, ready to mess around a little.

Bill Goodykoontz - Arizona Republic
Score: 2.5 out of 4 stars

There are some laughs. Put Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn and Richard Ayoade together and just let them go, and you're bound to get something funny every now and then. But Akiva Schaffer's film doesn't have enough laughs, or enough story, to maintain consistent momentum. Instead it meanders through distracting subplots and sputters along....

Steven Rea - Philadelphia Enquirer
Score: 2 out of 4 stars

Reality aside, The Watch is harmless enough - and even occasionally humorous, in a riffy, sketch-comedy kind of way.... Last question: After all of The Watch's alien ejaculate jokes, its orgy scene, a near teenage date rape, and a running gag about the sex acts of Asian housewives, will the executive at Costco who signed off on this wall-to-wall piece of product placement still have his or her job?

Randy Myers - San Jose Mercury News
Score: 2.5 out of 4 stars

All are good, but it is Ayoade, known for the British TV show "The IT Crowd," who earns the most laughs. That's in part because his is the freshest presence here, but it's also thanks to his impeccable timing. He's especially hilarious in the encounters with an alien, including his attempt to scoot it out the back door.

Glenn Kenny -MSN Movies
Score: 1.5 out of 5 stars

The movie's clichés and technical spottiness aside, "The Watch" is still not very good, overall.... The scenarios leading up to a way over-the-top shoot-'em-up-and-up-and-up climax provide near-countless occasions for raunchy humor, while the outer-space-invasion-in-small-town-America (that's not a spoiler, I swear) theme that gives the rationale for said climax seems to be straining for a satirical thrust, but never quite gets there. The only really successful bits of the movie are in spotty interactions between Stiller and Vaughn.

Colin Covert - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Score: 1 out of 4 stars

The bar is high for bad comedies, but "The Watch" promises to be this summer's worst. It's a muddled, jumbled scrapbook of a film that is bafflingly uncertain of what it is trying to be funny about. There is a cast of oblivious imbeciles, gross-out misbehavior, crass bedroom farce, and a science fantasy twist whose stupefying silliness is almost, but not quite, comic. It lurches from scene to dismal, rhythm-less, momentum-killing scene, tripping over its contradictions every step of the way.

Ty Burr - Boston Globe
Score: 1.5 out of 4 stars

The script (if you can call it that) is singularly focused on the male crotch and the things that come out of it, and the stars improvise to their worst tendencies. This may be Vaughn’s most overbearing performance, and that’s saying something. The other half of the movie mostly unfolds in and around Evan’s Costco, which makes it the most egregious example of corporate product placement since Tom Hanks shilled forFedEx in “Cast Away.”

David Farr - Time Out New York
Score: 2 out of 5 stars

There’s a secret weapon embedded within The Watch, however, and his name is Richard Ayoade. A London filmmaker (Submarine) and comedian best known on these shores as the Aspergers-y tech geek from the Britcom The IT Crowd, the bespectacled Ayoade is the odd man out in the group, and his offbeat, eerily cheery reading of every line lends the movie its single aspect of unpredictability. It’s a hilarious, dry and totally inspired turn; when he’s onscreen, the film works like gangbusters, if not like its obvious ancestor, Ghostbusters. He’s one truly worth keeping an eye on.

Wikian Reviews
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