This ain’t no damn video game.

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.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994) (SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction ’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump . And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993) (SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

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This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

Jeeves and Wooster 3.3: Cyril and the Broadway Musical (aka Introduction on Broadway) Well, that’s a relief. After a couple of middling episodes, the third season bounces right back, and that's despite Bertie continuing his transatlantic trip. Clive Exton once again plunders Carry On, Jeeves but this time blends it with a tale from The Inimitable Jeeves for the brightest spots, as Cyril Basington-Basington (a sublimely drippy Nicholas Hewetson) pursues his stage career against Aunt Agatha's wishes.

Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

Monte Carlo or Bust aka Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969) (SPOILERS) Ken Annakin’s semi-sequel to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines tends to be rather maligned, usually compared negatively to its more famous predecessor. Which makes me rather wonder if those expressing said opinion have ever taken the time to scrutinise them side by side. Or watch them back to back (which would be more sensible). Because Monte Carlo or Bust is by far the superior movie. Indeed, for all its imperfections and foibles (not least a performance from Tony Curtis requiring a taste for comic ham), I adore it. It’s probably the best wacky race movie there is, simply because each set of competitors, shamelessly exemplifying a different national stereotype (albeit there are two pairs of Brits, and a damsel in distress), are vibrant and cartoonish in the best sense. Albeit, it has to be admitted that, as far as said stereotypes go, Annakin’s home side win

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) (SPOILERS) There’s something daringly perverse about the attempt to weave a serious-minded, generation-spanning saga from the hare-brained premise of The Place Beyond the Pines . When he learns he is a daddy, a fairground stunt biker turns bank robber in order to provide for his family. It’s the kind of “only-in-Hollywood” fantasy premise you might expect from a system that unleashed Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Point Break on the world. But this is an indie-minded movie from the director of the acclaimed Blue Valentine ; it demands respect and earnest appraisal. Unfortunately it never recovers from the abject silliness of the set-up. The picture is littered with piecemeal characters and scenarios. There’s a hope that maybe the big themes will even out the rocky terrain but in the end it’s because of this overreaching ambition that the film ends up so undernourished. The inspiration for the movie

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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