“The Watch” is a new film directed by Akiva Schaffer, who is best known as a member of comedy group The Lonely Island. The film stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade encountering aliens while doing a local community watch.
I had mixed feelings going into this movie that I think hold up as my immediate reaction afterwards. I was pleasantly surprised by certain things but there were still a handful of things I didn’t particularly enjoy either.
For example, I’m not a huge fan of Vaughn but in this movie he had a lot of moments where he won me over. The team itself, that being the four main characters, are probably the best thing about the movie. Hill and Vaughn specifically throw out one liners throughout the entire movie, but Ayoade may have stolen the most scenes with lines that are still bouncing around my head. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy Stiller as much as I did the other three. His character is sort of a wet blanket but he doesn’t take too much away from anything.
The bad thing about what seems to be so much improv through one liners is that there’s going to be a lot of hit and miss. Improv is something I like a lot and it’s hilarious in parts, but other times I just rolled my eyes.
Another positive thing was the commitment this made to being sci-fi and adult oriented. “The Watch” was much more raunchy than I expected it to be. A certain cameo by friends of Schaffer gets that whole point across. Most of the time it was pretty funny but if you don’t like that kind of comedy you won’t find anything significantly new here.
Overall, I think I enjoyed it fairly. By the end, the good had outweighed the bad. I’d give “The Watch” a light recommendation, and a strong one if you are already a fan of Vaughn’s previous work.
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