Ride Along
(2014)
I’ve been blissfully ignorant of the steady rise to stardom
of Kevin Hart (although I have seen Meet Dave, if that counts), but on the
evidence of Ride Along his hyperactive
banter, with a winning strain of self-deprecation, needs to find significantly
better material if he’s to endure. Although in the US, with the box office tally
of this movie, you’d be sure he had already arrived. As ever, comedy is Hollywood’s
thorniest international export, and it made negligible outroads internationally
(a meagre 12% of the total gross). Discussing takings at the start of a review
is a sure sign of shortcomings and Ride
Along’s biggest is that it’s bereft of inspiration, essentially refitting The Hard Way in a tepid and perfunctory
manner.
The pairing of Michael J. Fox and James Woods in that movie was
inspired, a choice that naturally elevated the material; you could see the
contempt oozing from Woods’ every pore, and Fox (even more diminutive than
Hart) has always been game to send himself up. Hart and Ice Cube, as high
school security guard Ben Barber who dreams of joining the force and hardened
police detective James Payton respectively, have a reasonably edgy chemistry. Payton
doesn’t want to know about the mosquito buzzing in his ear, and is set on doing
everything he can to dissuade him from becoming a police officer, particularly
since Ben is dating his sister (Tika Sumpter). Cube is a an okay straight man (there’s
no point testing his very limited range), and works well bouncing abuse off
Hart, but he flounders in pretty much any “proper” acting scene. Likewise Hart,
who bears a surprising resemblance to Fred Ward from some angles, goes off on
some half decent riffs, but when a scene calls for serious interaction it
becomes clear he’s playing as if he’s the only man in the room, a common
failing of the stand-up writ large.
The plot is collection of formulaic set pieces, familiar to
anyone with a passing knowledge of mismatched buddies (not even cops) movies;
one (uptight, serious) starts out hating the other (a fantasist) but gradually,
through the course of their time together, learns he has good qualities and
thaws accordingly. Meanwhile, the dreamer proves himself (even possibly that he
is a real man after all); The Hard Way
commendably eschewed this. Woods still
hated Fox at the end. Here, Payton wants to bring down some Serbian arms
dealers and their boss and, of course, Barber ends up providing him with
unlikely help.
The picture is at its negligible finest during Hart’s
showboating moments; confronting a biker gang over a disabled parking space,
visiting a gun range, dealing with a crazy guy at the supermarket. And the old
standards of mistaken circumstances and impersonation that serve him best.
Accompanying Payton to a bar for what he assumes is another 126 (annoying calls
used to put rookies through their paces), Barber believes a genuinely dangerous
scenario to be make-believe. Likewise,
his impersonation of Omar (“I thought Omar
was 6’ 4”?”). It’s a scenario that’s
been seen played out many times before, and done much better, but its mildly
diverting.
Cube had etched himself out a regular spot in Januarys in
the US, amassing a serious of successes that far exceeded their modest budgets,
but this had tapered off of late; Ride
Along is a shot in the arm for him. The best I can say is he does good
reaction shots, angry or bewildered, mostly to Hart’s antics, and even has a fourth
wall moment when Ben, behaving as if a warehouse shootout is a video game, goes
searching for ammo on the floor and finds it; James looks disbelievingly into
camera.
If there’s anything of thematic note to discuss about this
movie, it’s the presentation of the fantasy escape world of video games as
equal and worthy in to “real life” experiences (you know, the ones where Ice
Cube exists as a cop); Ben’s knowledge, derived from Taliban crushing computer
games, repeatedly comes in handy, against all odds and probabilities, leading
to vital clues and leads. And rousingly, Ben’s game nerd buddies (“Thank you, Assface”) rally to help our
heroes in the third act. Is this an attempt to swing the scales back in favour
of the raging geeks? It’s a curiously valedictory message to send out, that
sitting in front of a screen playing games all day is valuable and equips one
for interaction with the great outside more than we would guess.
On the support side, I doubt any of the players are here for
the love of the art. John Leguizamo can’t afford to be picky, while Bruce
McGill and Laurence Fishburne always bring something to not necessarily very
good material. Tim Story directed this; the guy Fox let shit all over The Fantastic Four not once, but twice
(but hey, looking at the bottom line, which was Fox’s only criteria, it made
sense; the kind of sense that got John Moore aboard Die Hard 5). Story’s got his second unit doing overtime again,
which is to say this is barely directed. It’s a collection of shots stapled
together. Right from the pace-deflating music that punctures the engaging
opening title design its clear this will be a botch job. There’s no reason a
comedy vehicle can’t have a good director, although it’s also the case that they
rarely tarnish the reputation of bad ones; the Rush Hours made even Ratner look competent. I’m sure Story will ensure
Ride Along 2 is every bit as
scintillating as the first.
