The Watch

It was Friday night, and I was looking forward to watching a mindless comedy. Unfortunately, this movie was less than mindless and barely watchable. I was quite disappointed, as I like Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and aliens. They have all made decent comedies in the past, but somehow the four of them together just never gelled. Ben Stiller's character was flat and lifeless. Vince Vaughn was even more over-the-top than usual. Jonah Hill probably had the best character of the three, but his understated humor clashed with the over-the-top bits throughout the movie. And unfortunately, the aliens were just remakes of all the other alien movies I have ever seen. They did not even bother to create original looking monsters. The writers resorted to too much crude sexual humor and weird bouts of schizophrenia in all of the characters. I was never able to truly connect to any of them, and I really didn't care if the aliens skinned them alive for not. It's so hard to find a decent comedy these days that has a real story and believable characters – sophomoric humor and 30-second gag jokes just don't cut it for me anymore. It's a shame, because this movie had potential. There were even a couple of scenes that were minimally funny, they just never carried through to make the plot or the characters anything but shallow shells. I did watch the entire movie, however, at the end I felt like I had wasted two hours. Don't bother with this one!