It’s suburban nitwits versus scaly aliens in The Watch, a crude and sloppy sci-fi comedy that wastes a promising cast on a lame script.
Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade, comic stars drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, play the members of a hapless Ohio neighbourhood watch team formed by Stiller’s store manager Evan after one of his security guards is found gorily murdered.
But antsy do-gooder Evan struggles to turn party-hearty Bob (Vaughn), immature police force reject Franklin (Hill) and randy newly-divorced Brit Jamarcus (The IT Crowd’s Ayoade) into zealous civic vigilantes until he discovers that a bunch of slimy extraterrestrials are plotting an invasion from the basement of his cash-and-carry superstore.
With this cast and this set-up, we could have had comic fireworks; instead, thanks to slapdash direction and slack pacing, The Watch is a damp squib – so much so that even Vaughn’s quick-fire smut fails to ignite. When it comes to thrills, scares and good jokes, Joe Cornish’s terrific hoodies vs aliens sci-fi horror comedy mash-up Attack the Block puts The Watch to shame.
On general release from Friday 24th August.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
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