The Watch

Ben Stiller forms a neighbourhood watch after the murder of one of his employees. He’s joined by Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoyade. Things go south when it turns out aliens are behind the whole thing.

This might be good for a laugh or two but all in all it’s a pretty lazy piece of work. The buddy “oh shit it’s aliens” comedy genre can work pretty well (Attack the Block, The World’s End) but it needs real characters on top of cheap gags. Here it seems like everyone was just told to play people they have already done in previous films.

The other big weakness that any sci-fi comedy can suffer from is when the jokes dry up in the final third and make way for dreary, poorly thought out action sequences. Combine that with the overly schmaltzy buddy movie ending and The Watch has the perfect cocktail of shit to make you want to fast forward to the credits.

Poorly thought out and not all that funny, I’ll pick from the low hanging fruit and say that this should be called “Don’t Watch”.