Title: The Watch (2012)
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Cast: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade,
Rosemarie DeWitt
Review:
Certain things can destroy a films chances at the box
office, one of them is a negative social event that can be linked to the films
plot or premise. For example, the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre in Columbine
Ohio affected -actually completely destroyed- any chances that horror comedy
Idle Hands (1999) had at making any money. Why? Because it was a horror film about
high school teenagers! Simply because of that. After the Columbine tragedy, suddenly
anything that had to do with violence and teenagers was dead at the box office.
The same fate befell another film that was released that same year called
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) which had a group of teenagers threaten their evil
history teacher (played by none other then Helen Mirren!) with a crossbow. The students
end up knocking the teacher out and tying her to a bed in order to convince the
teacher that they need to pass her class. Of course, the nation had Columbine
on their heads so the movie died at the box office. The film was originally
called Killing Mrs. Tingle, but the studio, predicting death at the box office
changed the title to Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
An even more recent example is The Dark Knight Rises whose
box office was inevitably affected by the mass murders at a movie theater in
Aurora Colorado during a showing of the film. The Dark Knight Rises still made
a lot of cash and set world records, but I know the film would have made even
more then that if media coverage of the tragedy had not scared moviegoers from
going to watch the film. Well, here comes The Watch a film whose fate proved to
be similar to these films I’ve just mentioned. Why? Because it was linked to
the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford Florida Florida , sees 16 year old Trayvorn Martin
walking the streets of the neighborhood. Zimmerman for some reason mistakes Trayvon
for a hoodlum, chases him down, and ends
up shooting him in the chest. Turns out Trayvorn Martin was no criminal and
Zimmerman was just a trigger happy nutcase, a racist wannabe judge who racially
profiled Trayvorn and shot him without any real reasons. And so, since this
real life nutcase was part of a neighborhood watch, a nervous studio changed the
films original title from ‘Neighborhood Watch’ to just ‘The Watch’, which is a
misleading title, it made me think the film was about some sort of magical
watch or something?
So social events can hinder a films box office intake. Still,
a good question to ask would be: was The Watch a good movie to begin with? Truth
be told, The Watch is no big deal. It’s the kind of film that you’re better of
just renting; it’s nothing memorable or groundbreaking or awe inspiring. What
it does have is a good cast of comedians that elevate a very mediocre, half
assed script that feels so ‘been there done that’ that it renders the film utterly
forgettable. The script was paper thin, it made no effort to bring anything new
to the table. Bringing something new to the table is of course something that gotten
increasingly more difficult because so many films have been made. Inevitably most
films will walk on tired ground. Keeping this in mind, The Watch feels a heck
of a lot like Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters (1984). Four comedians come together
to fight a seemingly unstoppable force, and they have no real clue as to how to
do it, but they do it anyways. This isn’t the first film to try and duplicate
Ghostbusters success; in 2001 Ivan Reitman tried to duplicate his own Ghostbusters
formula and directed Evolution (2001), a film about four comedians playing the
roles of scientists trying to stop the return of the dinosaurs to modern times.
Reitman tried mixing Jurassic
Park
"Somebody get me The Ghostbusters..."
I guess nobody can really recreate the magic of The
Ghostbusters…ever! That’s such a perfect film, many things make Ghostbusters a
great film. The cast for example was pitch perfect. Bill Murray doesn’t play a smart ass prick who's full of himself, he was just being himself. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis are a pair of real
life geeks…and Ernie Hudson is the new guy who comes out of left field, I think
the trick with Ghostbusters was that everyone was perfectly cast because they
were basically playing themselves. Ghostbusters wannabes don’t understand that,
plus, there was the magic of making the film in New York City ! The people of New York and the city
itself add a magic to the proceedings that’s hard to find anywhere else. These
things matter people! In comparison, The Watch was filmed in Georgia and
takes place mostly inside of a Costco; enough said. The cast is a decent one
though, and its the only thing that keeps the film from sinking. I imagine this
film with a lesser cast would have sucked even harder. Stiller plays the ‘quintessential
nice guy’ for the umpteenth time, Vince Vaughn plays the eternal college frat
boy (yet again), Jonah Hill plays a wannabe cop who’s a little nutty, and
finally, Richard Ayoade is the weird one. They way they play with the dialog
and their improve jokes are what keep things interesting. But damn, what was up with the product placement
in this movie? Costco is splattered all over this one, so is Coca-Cola and Tide
and Trojan Condoms…it gets to be product placement overload; I know it’s just
the nature of the beast and all, but it makes you feel like people only do these
things because they get paid? And that’s just really sad…I can’t talk about it
anymore! It’s giving me a headache…let me take a Nuprin! Little. Yellow. Different.
So anyways, the whole alien invasion scenario doesn’t even
matter on this film, which is one of the biggest mistakes these filmmakers
made. That’s what was cool about Ghostbusters, they had ‘Gozer the Gozerian’ and
Zuul’s and Shandor’s and Gate Keepers and giant marshmallow men! Gozer opened up portals to other dimensions, bringing
forth formidable villains! Here we have aliens sans-personality, again here is
where the script shows it needed more work. As it is, the film feels like a
lazy cash in, like a film that takes the audience intelligence for granted and
thinks we’re going to accept this half assed attempt at a movie as a true film worth
our time. The Watch isn’t a complete waste of time, but it’s a lame attempt at
a film. It’s got cool looking monsters and funny improves, but lame ass
villains and a weak as hell script. My advice to the guys behind this film is
try harder next time, this was just lame-o my friends! A wasted opportunity
that has a moment or two, but could’ve been so much better had they put more
effort into it.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Original promotional material bearing the films original title
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