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The Watch2012 | 102 min | R | 2.39:1
The last 20 minutes of “The Watch” are wonderful. Filled with exciting alien attack antics, a charmingly macabre playfulness, and actors sticking to a script, the climax of the film seizes the potential of the material, bringing on laughs and a little suspense. The rest of “The Watch” is tired, aggravatingly vociferous stuff, with an insatiable improvisational thirst that makes a perfectly agreeable premise look like an audition tape for The Groundlings. Frighteningly unfunny and disappointingly unimaginative, the feature is a missed opportunity on a grand scale, pulling together authentically funny people who spend most of the movie riffing themselves into a coma. It’s the first sci-fi comedy where one roots for more sci-fi. 
A model citizen of his small Ohio town, Evan (Ben Stiller) is proud of his accomplishments as a manager of the local Costco, yet feels a little skittish around his loving wife Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt), who desperately wants to get pregnant. When a local security guard is slaughtered by an unknown assailant, Evan starts up a Neighborhood Watch chapter in his community, attracting the interest of loudmouth Bob (Vince Vaughn), loner Franklin (Jonah Hill), and outsider Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade). Working to contain his boisterous volunteers, Evan begins his investigation of a murder the local cops (including Will Forte) have no clue how to solve. Instead of running into a bloodthirsty killer during their rounds, the men accidentally uncover an alien invasion in their backyard, stunned to learn extraterrestrials have arrived in the Midwest, with all signs pointing to a suspicious interest in the bowels of Costco. Improvisational purging is the current trend in screen comedy, requiring quick-witted actors with a sharp sense of timing and vast imagination for one-liners. With Stiller, Vaughn, and Hill, “The Watch” seems like an easy lay-up for director Akiva Schaffer (the delightful “Hot Rod”), yet the picture never breaks out of first gear. While a script is credited to Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg, “The Watch” looks as though it was made up on the spot, with the alien invasion story merely acting as a backdrop for a cluster of gifted men frantically trying to dream up vulgarities to compensate for an absence of planned humor. It’s depressing to watch the movie unfold, with entire scenes lost to verbal diarrhea, finding Schaffer cutting frantically to build comedy out of nothingness. When one of the major sequences of “The Watch” is devoted to watching Bob urinate into a beer can in the back seat of a car, it’s clear someone forgot to implant a funny bone into a promising big screen idea. 
Of course, if the pee jokes don’t bother you, there are all types of bodily fluid gags to keep the film rolling along, with semen a popular reference for the actors and their director. There’s also an excess of cursing to help spackle over the creative holes, contributing to an atmosphere of laziness that cripples the effort. It seems with improvisation, once the swearing begins, any hope for cleverness is effectively destroyed. Also keeping “The Watch” grounded is a strange play for an emotional response, concentrated on Evan’s guilt over a fertility secret he’s keeping from his wife. Enhanced characterization is a welcome development, yet Schaffer is tone-deaf with his heartfelt detours, keeping “The Watch” bipolar as it swings from bawdy comedy to sincere domestic concerns with limited transitional control. The unsteady tonality extends to Bob’s struggles as a single father, trying to protect his teen daughter from a particularly aggressive and endowed lothario. The asides just slow the movie to a crawl, feeling unnecessary to a plot that involves the appearance of aliens in Ohio. 
The only distraction that works is time spent with Evan’s bloodless, creepy neighbor, played lecherously by Billy Crudup in the feature’s only successful performance and element of tension, with the Watch unsure of the town newcomer and his fixation with toned bodies. The movie needed more of his structured weirdness. The climax does away with the shapeless jesting and finds a scripted purpose, giving Schaffer the boundaries he so desperately needs. It’s a violent conclusion, but peppered with satisfactory silliness and smartly designed jokes, along with a larger sci-fi scale (nicely shot by cinematographer Barry Peterson) the rest of the feature oddly shies away from. “The Watch” comes alive during this final showdown between the fraidy cats and the growling aliens, requiring a certain action-oriented pace that doesn’t have time for cyclical riffing. It’s a godsend, yet arrives much too late to salvage the whole shebang. Still, the sequence reveals a concentration about “The Watch” that should’ve been utilized from the first frame. Watching talented men fumble around the dark for pedestrian humor spoils whatever escapist impact the movie was hoping to make. Starring: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Rosemarie DeWitt, Will Forte, Richard Ayoade Director: Akiva Schaffer » See full cast & crew |
 
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