If you (like me) were looking forward to the Vince Vaughn /Ben Stiller neighborhood watch/alien invasion flick The Watch , then early reviews are likely to disappoint. Early reviews are in, and most critics weren’t exactly taken with the summer action comedy.
The Watch , titled Neighborhood Watch before the Trayvon Martin shooting, is basically a movie about how an over-enthusiastic (and armed) neighborhood watch group take on an alien invasion. It stars Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, and Vince Vaughn, all big names in comedy and guaranteed laugh-makers. The three form a trifecta – even if you don’t particularly care for one of them, the other two should pick up the slack. In theory. Unfortunately for The Watch , the formula doesn’t really work. The general consensus of the critics? The Watch sucked.
Justin Chang of Variety called the entire film a “lowbrow, lame-brained mash-up of buddies-on-patrol comedy and sci-fi actioner, held together (barely) by an endless string of penis jokes.”Stephen Holden of the New York Times called it a “ramshackle science-fiction comedy desperate for laughs,” quipping that it was likely “filmed on autopilot on a strict budget.”
The penis-joke criticism pops up elsewhere as well. Jake Coyle of the Associated Press said that The Watch had an “almost paint-by-numbers feeling to it” following “better films like Superbad and Pineapple Express .’” And “though many of the jokes land, some of them feel like a game of penis-related Mad Libs.” Betsy Sharkey of the LA Times concurred with the overuse of phallic jokes. “Never in the history of mankind has a movie been more phallic-ly fixated than The Watch ,” she said. She did provide one concession: the non-penis jokes, however sparse, are able to “keep the laughs coming.”
Here’s the trailer for The Watch . Still going to see it? Critics notwithstanding?
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