There are certain movies that are so commercial they can actually be considered as products. They’re disposable and forgettable, usually good just for one use only. The Watch is one of those movies, a science fiction comedy you’re going to forget as soon as it’s over. You can see just how it was made and who for. Using polls, pie charts, and studying popular trends, a mildly entertaining plot emerges out of the depths. The cast is selected thanks to their supercomputer calculating the odds of this movie being profitable. And that’s how we got this movie we have before us today.
Do not try to make sense out of The Watch and do not try to take it seriously. If you’re looking for a movie to play in the background while you’re rolling another one or getting ready for something else, you’ve just found it. When you look at the cast, you think how the fuck isn’t this movie better? We’ve got Stiller, Vaughn, Hill, and motherfucking Richard Moss Ayoade in lead roles?! And we’ve got okay jokes, whimsical situations just like in any other comedy you’ve seen. And, on top of it all, we’ve got motherfucking aliens!
The Watch is basically a buddy comedy featuring a lot of “bro jokes”. You would think that the writers were trying to get the teen audience but that’s not the case. They were trying to get their dads who still laugh when someone says a lame sex joke. And hey, I like sex jokes as much as the next guy but let’s have some standards for cucks sake. Also, how the fuck someone who works at Costco can afford to live in an affluent suburb? On the other hand, the action scenes were quite good, especially toward the end. And a surprising amount of those bro jokes actually landed, so there’s that.
Glenview, a sleepy little town in Ohio is about to be shaken violently as a night watchman dies in a local supermarket. The first results of the investigations are suggesting that there’s some sort of beast loose in the city. So, four guys, afraid for their safety and looking for a good time form a neighborhood watch. Ready, willing, and able, the four of them are about to face their biggest enemy, a fucking alien invasion. Will they manage to stop the Aliens, hellbent on the destruction of the Earth (or leatheeeeer), is up to you to find out in this entertaining comedy.
This is the End [2013] is the movie that The Watch [2012] wanted to be, and this just shows you what’s going on here. The time difference between the movies is just a year and they basically have the same story and almost the same approach to the subject. The only difference is that the latter one is intentionally bigger than life and over the top. The Watch just didn’t want to do that and instead went for a more commercial approach. This could have been a more coherent and focused movie, but they decided to give too much freedom (and faith) to improv show of the main actors and their half-baked ideas (and when I say half-baked, I do mean half-baked…).
This sentenced the movie to the fire-and-forget category. If you’re looking for something a bit brainer but with aliens, I suggest you take a look at Paul. Starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, this is a definition of an awesome science fiction buddy comedy.
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Writers: Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Cast: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, Doug Jones, Erin Moriarty
Fun Facts: The original version of this movie is a Will Farrell vehicle with David Dobkin serving the role of a director. However, since the two of them had a falling out in 2009, those plans never came to fruition.
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IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1298649
