Review: The Watch
Superbad writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen teamed up with Bolt writer Jared Stern, Saturday Night Live writer-director Akiva Schaffer, and of course a band of familiar faces for the late-summer movie The Watch. Late-summer films have a strange tendency and can go either way when it comes to their quality. Last summer had a slew of pleasant late-summer surprises in Return of the Planet of the Apes, Fright Night and Shark Night 3D. But 2011 didn't deliver any films as huge as The Avengers or The Dark Knight Rises, so this crew might have a very tall task on their hands here.
Starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade (whom fans of The IT Crowd will of course recognize), The Watch centers on small-town do-gooder and busybody Evan Trautwig (Stiller), a general manager of a Costco. He lives an innocuous existence in what he calls the greatest city in the greatest country on the greatest planet: Glenview, Ohio. When his world is turned upside down after his store security guard is brutally murdered, Evan puts together a neighborhood watch group composed of the most ragtag individuals possible. While on the search, they discover that the killer they're searching for is a creature from another planet.
The Watch is one of those instances where the marketing didn't do the movie any favors. From the onset, it appeared in trailers as if this was a film made with little to no effort, and that maybe everyone showed up just to collect a check. Vaughn in particular was a point of concern -- especially when you factor in the last few movies he's done, it appeared as if his shtick might be tiresome and unfunny. Thankfully, none of this was true. The entire cast, patricularly Vaughn, exceeded the expectations set forth by the generic trailers. Ayoade manages to steal a number of scenes that he's in and it appears he has a real knack for that kind of comedy.
It's easy to see why the marketing was so generic. The Watch is incredibly clever and there are a lot of moments that were much better served being seen for the first time on a theater screen instead of a trailer. It's also an incredibly vulgar film, and while that does have a tendency to be a little much at times, director Schaffer manages to pull back at the right moments to keep the viewer into the film.
The late-summer pleasant surprise is a welcome trend from the last couple of years, and it's good to see that it continues with The Watch. Vince Vaughn fans will be glad to see a return to form from him. It's not gonna light the world on fire, but it's a much better movie than it should be, and seeing funny people put forth some real effort into making a good film is definitely a welcome thing to see.