The Watch [MA]

Evan loves his town…really loves his town. So when one of his employees is found brutally murdered, he takes it upon himself to find the killer by forming a neighbourhood watch. What begins as a hunt for a killer soon turns into something else entirely when the watch discovers that their town is threatened by an alien invasion. Will the space scum get away with it? Not on their watch! 

And here we have another crossbreed of film genres that just didn’t pan out too well. I found The Watch to be a trying and ultimately boring movie packed with crude comedy, loads of profanities, and tacked on writing. I love the actors in it and the story has potential, but for whatever reason, this movie just did not work. At all! 

Evan loves his town…really loves his town. So when one of his employees is found brutally murdered, he takes it upon himself to find the killer by forming a neighbourhood watch. What begins as a hunt for a killer soon turns into something else entirely when the watch discovers that their town is threatened by an alien invasion. Will the space scum get away with it? Not on their watch! 

I think what really let the movie down was its attempt to be too many things all at once. On the one hand, it’s a science fiction comedy, which at some point tried to achieve the laughs of Hot Fuzz and the horror Alien blending the two in the process. Then on the other hand, it’s a buddy picture that had its characters, a mismatched and unlikely group, become the closest of friends and preach to one another about their life’s problems. This buddy picture part didn’t really work as well because the general concept, I think, is so off in another direction entirely that there was no room for life lessons or anything like that. 

The special effects with the aliens were pretty cool and the performances weren’t bad in any way; Ben Stiller still provides his usual over-worded analysis and Vince Vaughn still spews forth a hundred words a minute, but at the end of the day I found this movie to be a good story idea that was not written so that it could achieve its potential. 

Starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, Rosemarie DeWitt, Will Forte, Doug Jones, and Billy Crudup, The Watch is a momentary funny movie filled with action, science fiction, romance, comedy, and friendship. It’s by no means a horrible movie, but it’s definitely nothing to rave about.