Post by StevePulaski on Jun 18, 2016 13:50:32 GMT -5
Central Intelligence (2016)
Directed by: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Directed by: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Rating: ★★
When we see Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson don a fat suit in "Central Intelligence," as his character showers naked in the high school locker-room and belts out a pop song minutes before he's about to be humiliated before the entire school's homecoming pep assembly, it reeks of utter comedic desperation. When we hear Kevin Hart say numerous lines like "I'm black, I don't..." or "black people never...," we recall other films of his, such as "Ride Along" and last year's atrocious "Get Hard," and recognize how we've seen and heard this material before. Finally, when we see a stupid comedy turn into an incredibly violent, almost incoherent action movie, we realize that this is a woefully misguided and facile attempt at the buddy comedy genre.
"Central Intelligence" wouldn't be so bad if it just wasn't more of the same. The same penis jokes, the same race jokes, the same jokes revolving around characters you couldn't believe could patiently wait at a doctor's office let alone actually uncover a conspiracy plot. If it weren't for the personality of both The Rock and Kevin Hart, this film would've been close to being an unwatchable, structure-less mess.
The film, as stated, opens at a high school pep assembly where overweight geek Robbie Weirdicht (Johnson) - just say his name aloud to hear the comedic desperation for yourself - is thrown onto the gym floor naked by a group of bullies. The only one to help him was the beloved Calvin Joyner (Kevin Hart), who was in the midst of accepting yet another award as if he didn't already command the entire school. That was years ago and things have changed greatly; Calvin is a low-rent accountant, married to the girl that was prom queen to his king, and misses his glory days, while Robbie is now "Bob Stone," who links up with Calvin via Facebook one day to catch up.
Bob is far from the chubby kid that Calvin once knew. He's now muscular and confident, and after a night of drinking, the CIA comes to Calvin's door the next day with serious questions about Bob. It turns out that Bob is a rogue CIA agent, who is armed and extremely dangerous, and Calvin discovers, whether he likes it or not, he is now functioning in a world of violence and espionage as he tries to untangle the web of deception that Bob told him all while planning on making it to their high school reunion later that evening.
I simply don't feel like articulating the interworkings of the criminal plot because, why bother? This is not a film with a cogently assembled, or even interesting, hacking/espionage plot. It's a dime-a-dozen, faceless crime story that sandwiches itself in between the comedy formula - like a low-rent hot-dog stand in a corporate mall. It has no business being in there, but one thought it was an okay idea to give it a shot.
Both The Rock and Hart have admirable chemistry here, as well as enough personality where even the film's worst sequences don't feel like insufferable comic sketches. The Rock's perpetual laidback coolness, as if he legitimately doesn't feel as if he's doing anything wrong, is a perfect showcase for his talent, and Hart, as always, has no problem running around in circles whilst making a lot of noise and taking a great deal of heat for being short. Both actors are seasoned enough to know their place in a movie that evidently doesn't think much of them by giving them such a lackluster script to work with.
"Central Intelligence" is a film of odds and ends. For one, it feels a lot like the recently released Adam Sandler film "The Do-Over," though, shockingly enough, that was funnier and provided a lot more wit than this particular film. In addition, it feels like it reverses the character roles of the "Ride Along" series (Hart is now the more impatient Ice Cube-character while The Rock is more of the loose-cannon Hart character) as well as offer up the kind of low-rent thrills and eye-rolling plot-points of a movie like Melissa McCarthy's "Spy."
There's little else "Central Intelligence" proves other than recycling from numerous other lame and mediocre movies produces a film that is equally lame and mediocre.