Four everyday guys come together to form a neighbourhood watch group to escape their humdrum lives. Little do they know that their town has been over taken by aliens posing as suburbanites and they have to save the day.
Ghostbusters. Gremlins. Beetlejuice.
I can virtually guarantee that these were the movies that Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg had in mind while they were writing The Watch, a buddy-comedy-cum-alien-invasion-sci-fi movie that owes a huge debt to these 1980s horror-comedy blockbusters. Unfortunately, though, The Watch doesn't come close to matching the wit or warmth of these much-loved classics, instead ending up in the kind of mediocre B-list category occupied by the likes of Critters or Tremors.
That's a shame, because you would think that a film with these kinds of established comedy writers would contain more hits than misses. What's more, the movie boasts an impressive cast of seasoned comedy performers: along with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill, there's some British talent in the form of Richard Ayoade (Moss from The IT Crowd). So what went wrong?
To my mind, it seems like there just wasn't enough work done on the script. Perhaps the people involved just assumed that there was so much comedy talent on board that it would suffice for them all to turn up, improvise a few comedic riffs around the bare bones of the plot, and they'd have a hit on their hands. But either the script was so underwritten that it didn't give them enough to work from or they just weren't up to it on the day. The result is a slightly aimless, shambling movie in which the leads look more embarrassed than anything else.
The story itself is straightforward enough, and a perfectly workable plot to base this kind of movie around. Ben Stiller (who obviously plays a character, although I've got no recollection of what his name might be, which shows you how little these things matter in a film like this) is the manager of a local supermarket who arrives at work one day to find that his night-watchman has been murdered in mysterious spooky circumstances. This leads him to assemble a loose posse of local townsfolk as a neighbourhood watch - but they get far more than they bargained for when they get embroiled in an extra-terrestrial invasion that involves replacing human beings with alien doppelgangers.
Vince Vaughn shows up as the loudmouth/cocky/not-quite-as-charming-as-he-was-in-Swingers character that he usually plays; Jonah Hill is his traditional naive/boyish/stupid/scarily intense self; and Ayoade reprises Moss-from-the-IT-Crowd in all but name (although he does get some slightly more interesting material to deal with in the second half of the film as his character develops into something more complex).
But really, you're not watching a movie like The Watch for character development: you're watching it for the laughs. And there are simply far too few of those to make this a worthwhile way to spend an hour and a half. The character comedy is predictable and tired, and obvious from the very first moment you meet each of the group members. The gross-out humour isn't gross enough or funny enough to hit the mark. And the absurd/unexpected stuff, while occasionally offering a slightly different flavour (such as the secret Swingers club being run by a local weirdo), doesn't gel closely enough with the rest of the movie to feel like it's even part of the same story.
Combine this with some weak attempts at pathos (like Stiller's character having fertility problems or Vaughn's having an unhappy home life) and you have a recipe for a horror-comedy that's neither as scary nor as funny as it should be.
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. A group of guys stumble upon an alien invasion during a faux neighbourhood watch meeting where they usually do some male bonding to get away from their dull suburban lives in this sci-fi comedy starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Will Forte. Akiva Schaffer directs from a script by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Jonah Hill and Rosemarie DeWitt co-star.
Comedy starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade as a group of friends who form a neighbourhood watch group in order to win time away from their responsibilities, only to discover a plot to destroy the world. While Evan Trautwig (Stiller), a newcomer to the suburban neighbourhood, may have a legitimate reason for forming a crime watch group following the recent murder of a friend, it is clear that for most of the men ulterior motives are at work. Indeed, Bob Finnerty (Vaughn) seems to spend a lot more time examining the dating habits of his daughter, Chelsea (Erin Moriarty), than he does looking for threats. However, when the men stumble across what appears to be an alien plan to destroy humankind, they understand where their responsibilities lie and set out to counter the threat.
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