Throughout this year, there are several comedies coming out that I'm looking forward to, such as Jason Bateman's feature film directorial debut, Bad Words, the Zac Efron-Seth Rogan film, Neighbors, Dumb and Dumber To, Horrible Bosses 2, and 22 Jump Street. But the one thats starting it off this year is the new Kevin Hart film, Ride Along.
When Ben, a high school security guard and hardcore video gamer, gets accepted into the police academy, he decides it's time he makes an honest woman of his girlfriend. But before she'll let him propose, he must get the blessing of her hard-hitting brother, James, who happens to be an Atlanta police officer. James decides to take Ben on a ride along to prove he's worthy of his sister, and mess with him a little. But during their ride along, things get a little too real and a little too dangerous.
This isn't the first time Tim Story has worked with these two guys. His last film, Think Like A Man, which has a sequel coming out later this year, starred Kevin Hart, and he also directed Barbershop, which starred Ice Cube. Story knows how to do comedy and, in his latest endeavor, he succeeded at it again. Some of you may recognize his name as the guy who brought us Fantastic Four and the sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, but don't let that sway your decision to see this film. He's much better at comedy than comic book action. But it does explain the amount of humor in those films.
Kevin Hart and Ice Cube played fairly well off one another. Hart's comedy is solid and Cube plays a great bad ass, and definitely played a great straightman to Kevin Hart. Other than a few poorly written lines, I enjoyed the writing and most of the acting in this film. Bruce McGill plays James' boss, Lt. Brooks. He's most recently known for his role as another police officer, Detective Vince Korsak, on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles. He's a great actor and I love seeing him pop up in movies.
John Leguizamo and Bryan Callen played fellow police officers, Santiago and Miggs. I personally think that their performances fell a little flat. Their roles could have been played by almost anyone and still have had the same effect. But the person whose performance definitely WASN'T flat was Laurence Fishburne as the elusive Omar. Fishburne is such a talented actor and to see someone of his caliber in a film like this was a pleasant surprise.
Overall, this film was a good start for this year's comedies. If you like Kevin Hart's comedy or are in the mood for a good buddy-cop film, then I would recommend this movie.
Josh's Rating: 7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment