But Who Watches “The Watch”?

In a way, I guess you could sort of appreciate The Watch’s lack of ambition. It’s a weird little microcosm in between the late-2000’s comedy movie revolution and the return to childish and crude-in-all-the-wrong-ways humor we see before us right now. It’s trying hard to be a Judd Apatow film, but just doesn’t have the characters or the interesting plot to be such. You’d think a film that is surprisingly a love letter to 90’s gangsta rap would have the guts to be a little outside of the box.

Ben Stiller makes for a decent lead role. He plays his character excellently and honestly manages to convince me that I’m not looking at White Goodman from Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

My favorite actor in the film, Jonah Hill, has done better. He doesn’t have much to work with as the film very inconsistently portrays his character as a hot-tempered tough guy and a dropout with little free will of his own. His occasional add-libbing and highly recognizable Jonah Hill style acting make a flawed and shallow character more interesting.

What else can I say about the acting? Vince Vaughn was Vince Vaughn and Richard Ayoade adds a pleasant style to an, again, flawed and shallow character.

No one should condone this basic, boring, predictable 1-2-3 plot. There’s a twist, if you can call it that. But, it’s not much of a surprise when you see it coming an hour and 30 minutes early. Like I said, this film suffers from some flawed characters and that aspect is only accentuated by its explosive final act. Not to spoil any of the “twists” but if you really, honestly think about the rushed, last-minute details and how they fit in with the plot of the film at large, you’ll find that they don’t at all.

Despite it’s very, very numerous flaws The Watch manages to make the most of its first and some of the second act and ends up being pretty funny. There are many chuckles to be had here. If only the movie hadn’t decided to be about fighting aliens and had simply been about a bunch of middle-aged, paranoid men. But, currently that subject matter is a bit controversial. It’s very much in the same vein as Cowboys and Aliens, which was a nice western until the aliens showed up. Aliens ruin everything.