The Watch | Review
‘The Watch’ could have been just a regular dude comedy, but the fact that it features aliens in the mix makes it somewhat different from the rest of its pack. Without the aliens the film still would have been the same movie. There’s a lot of talent in the mix, with comedic stars like Ben Stillar, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill, and a script co-written by Seth Rogen. The film is ultimately an underwhelming film with a couple of bright moments, much like its hit-and-miss jokes. It’s not downright terrible, but it definitely could have been so much more.
Stiller plays Evan Trautwig, the manager of Costco in a small town that I don’t remember the name of. He’s a community activist who has formed many social clubs like a spanish club for the elderly, a running club, and most recently a neighborhood watch group. Evan formed the neighborhood watch in order to find the murderer of his friend who worked as a night guard at Costco. The watch only has three other members: Bob (Vaughn), a happily married man and father who just moved into town, Franklin (Hill), a mentally unstable cop-wannabe, and Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade), a recent divorcee. They’re all relatively bored men who just want to hang out and drink beer. Unbeknownst to the group, however, they’ve just signed up for a whole lot more than they bargained for.
It turns out that Evan’s friend’s murderer is out of this world. The watch soon discover that there’s an alien invasion that’s about to happen and that their small town is the first to go. The reasoning why such a town is the central point of the invasion? Because Costco literally has everything under one roof.
‘The Watch’ features some pretty funny and downright hilarious jokes every now and then, but they’re not as consistent as some of the better comedies of the year, namely ‘Ted’ and ’21 Jump Street’. The film features perhaps one too many penis jokes. In fact, the entire film is pretty much one big penis joke since the guys not only make these kind of jokes amongst themselves, but also about the aliens! There’s just no getting around penis jokes in this film.
If the film had played out as just the gang’s interactions with the aliens it would have been a much better film. Instead, there are a few stray sub-plots involving Evan’s sterile-ness and his tendency to avoid telling his wife, and Bob’s strained relationship with his teenage daughter. These sub-plots might have been fine if they were better implemented into the plot, as well as better written in general. When these scenes appear in the film they mostly feel out of place.
The characterizations of the four leads are also a problem. They all essentially play less interesting versions of past characters in other films. The easiest example is Jonah Hill’s character Franklin, who feels like the same character from ’21 Jump Street’, but with mental illness. ‘The Watch’ also wastes the talented Richard Ayoade, who finally gets his time to shine for a wide audience. Too bad the film barely uses him at all, and instead makes him into a weird character who just makes funny faces every now and then.
Director Akiva Schaffer (of SNL and The Lonely Island fame) tries his best to blend the sci-fi nature of the film with its vulgar humor, but it never feels anything but mediocre. There are a few wide-shot scenes that seem like they could be from blockbusters like ‘Transformers’ – complete with lens flares too – to make the film feel more science fiction-ey. The plot twists are completely ridiculous and have no basis; they basically play out just for laughs. The final confrontation between the humans and aliens is completely underwhelming and frankly, kind of boring. The talented cast tried their best but ‘The Watch’ is far from their best work.