Product Description
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Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade take
male bonding to hilarious new heights in this outrageous,
no-holds-barred comedy that gets funnier every time you watch!
There's trouble brewing in peaceful Glenview, Ohio. That's why
four civic-minded citizens, armed with flashlights,
walkie-talkies and spiffy new jackets, have teamed up to
safeguard their community. But the guys find more than they
bargained for when they uncover an alien plot to destroy Earth,
and now these bumbling heroes are Glenview's only chance to save
the neighborhood - and the world - from annihilation!
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As the advances in CGI special effects have continued to keep
action-movie audiences roaring for bigger and better displays of
digital bombast, a trend in Hollywood comedies has upped the ante
in a parallel way. Raunchy, risqué, and just plain filthy humor
is standard fare for audiences who like their vulgar laughs as
much as their superheroic explosions. The two worlds collide in
The Watch, a dirty shoot-'em-up whose comic core counters the
extreme sci-fi story of an alien race that can't take a joke.
Fortunately, the decidedly non-superhuman heroes battle it out
with equal parts punches and punch lines. The first-rate cast is
headed by Ben Stiller, who has plenty of experience with filthy
humor and big-budget action. He also has the movie-star charisma
to bring high concept down to the toilet or the gutter, whichever
happens to be funnier. Stiller plays Evan, the upstanding,
uptight manager of an Ohio Costco who starts to really care about
crime after one of his security guards is brutally murdered. The
can't really be bothered (Will Forte is excellent as a
pompous local lawman), so Evan starts a neighborhood watch as a
way to take back the night. Unfortunately his recruits turn out
to be a less than vigilant vigilante group, with Vince Vaughn as
a brawny motor mouth obsessed with protecting his teen daughter,
Jonah Hill as an off-kilter arms expert who was rejected by the
academy (for good reason), and the indeterminately ethnic
Richard Ayoade (excellent, as he was in the British sitcom The IT
Crowd), who's focused only on the kind of action that involves
sex and females. The quartet's individual issues are played at
maximum laugh-per-minute volume and remain part of the story even
after the team realizes their crime problem isn't from the inner
city, it's from outer space. Turns out a hive of aliens have
commandeered Evan's Costco as a base of operations to dominate
humanity. After all, what better place to stage an Earth takeover
than a place that has everything? (Costco should get a big-box
good sport award for signing off on such wall-to-wall product
placement.) The script by Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, and Evan
Goldberg (the latter two's brilliant writing career also includes
Superbad and The Pineapple Express) is chock-a-block with jokes
that touch the penis in nearly every way imaginable. Think
masturbation, think Magnum condoms, think vibrant or fruitless
bodily fluids and you'll be thinking like the obsessive lugs in
The Watch. And it's not just human penises that are made the butt
of most of the jokes. In one of many playful plot contrivances,
the aliens' genitals become cause for out-of-this-world
vulgarity. Apparently Hollywood man-children aren't the only
beings in the universe who don't think with their heads. These
aliens have a very peculiar Achilles' heel. Here's a hint: it's
also nowhere near their feet. And even though this soft spot is
their brain, it's not inside their skull. The phallic jokes never
let up, but at least most of them are funny. The Watch tries so
hard for nonstop laughs that it can't help but yield a high rate
of success, especially when the material is worked by such an
estimable ensemble of comedy pros. It's clear that director Akiva
Schaffer fostered a strong improv vibe on the set (his background
is directing shorts on SNL). He's best at capturing a spontaneous
sketch-comedy tone that drives the constant one-upsmanship
between the filthy, shocking shenanigans of the four leads. They
get ample help from the supporting cast. In addition to Will
Forte as the disinterested cop, Rosemary DeWitt is terrific as
Evan's demanding wife. And in an extended, uncredited cameo Billy
Crudup plays the weirdest, most enigmatic creepy-insinuation-guy
ever. Talk about hiding a dirty secret! There's an overall
hit-or-miss quality of comedy and action in The Watch, though
there are plenty more tick marks in the hit column. It's all
bad-mannered good fun with the badge of a hard-R rating worn as
proudly as a giant splooge of green alien slime. --Ted Fry
