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Dwayne Johnson And Kevin Hart Made Movie Magic In ‘Central Intelligence,’ Height Difference Doesn’t Mean Talent Difference

By Colin Fredericson
Published on: 13:14 PST, Jun 7, 2016

Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart are pumping their new comedy movie by cracking jokes, something good friends do best together. The new comedy duo might work out better than Kevin Hart’s pairings with Ice Cube. But to see the towering, hulking Johnson paired with the diminutive Hart is already more of an odd couple than with Cube. Dwayne Johnson’s height reaches 6-foot 5-inches while Hart is more than a foot shorter. In Central Intelligence, Johnson will take on an unusual bodily form in flashback scenes thanks to the magic of computer graphics and visual effects. Expect to see The Rock as you’ve definitely never seen him before.

In the movie, The Rock plays a CIA agent who recruits Kevin Hart to help him out. They meet at a high school reunion in which the formerly obese Bob Stone, played by Dwayne Johnson, seeks out the school’s former athletic star turned accountant Calvin Joyner, played by Kevin Hart. Fun times ensue as the duo, and more specifically Hart, wind up on all sorts of dangerous secret missions. Most of the jokes seem to center upon Kevin Hart’s reserved character coming up against Johnson’s wild and daring attitude, so it isn’t just their size that’s the butt of all the jokes.

As Entertainment Weekly reports, one of the most amazing things about the production process for Central Intelligence is the way they made Dwayne fat through technology. The fat body you see in the trailer is actually the body of Vine star Sione Kelepi. He says he ended up in a thong for most of his scenes. Johnson’s face was digitally mapped onto Kelepi by the same team responsible for the visual effects for the Avengers movie. The process may just resemble the way Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo had his face digitally embedded on the giant green monster. But for Central Intelligence, the results were surprisingly even more believable.

Sione Kelepi is the Vine star famous for his dancing skills and taking pride in his weight, showing that a few extra pounds don’t prevent him from having fun on the dance floor. He’s not only a great dancer that can do all the popular dance moves you see in music videos, he is extremely flexible and agile, defying perceptions of size. He was featured dancing in Meghan Trainor’s extremely popular video “All About That Bass.” He didn’t start out dancing in his social media posts, but that’s what went viral for him which led to fame.

Perhaps, just like Kevin Hart, he defies standard perception. Kelepi’s size is a little unusual for what he can do, so it’s entertaining to people. Kevin Hart’s size is a little on the shorter side, which is probably why this is an action comedy movie and not just straight action. Comedy requires a quick wit and a sense of what makes others react. It doesn’t really matter what size you are. So that’s why Kevin gets paired up with people vastly different from him in movies. When he wasn’t with the scowling Ice Cube, he was with tall and pasty comedian Will Ferrell.

But with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at his side, he’s got a great opportunity to shine in a movie with one of the top entertainers in Hollywood today. As Billboard reported, the two worked together as joint hosts of the MTV Movie Awards this year. They showcased some of their great on-camera chemistry and had popular live social media broadcasts together before the actual event. The current hilarious round of promotion is doing the same thing for them in the lead up to Central Intelligence‘s June 17 release date. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart are making themselves out as stars as versatile in action as in comedy.

[Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for MTV]

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