Reviews - The Watch (2012)

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Country: USA

Genres: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Taglines: Got Protection?

Writers: Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

Stars: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, ...

In Glenview, Ohio, Evan is the manager of the Costco department store and married to Abby. When the Costco night watchman, Antonio Guzman, is mysteriously murdered, Evan organizes The Neighborhood Watch, a watch team with his suburban neighbors Bob, Franklin and Jamarcus to protect the neighborhood and find the killer of Antonio. Soon they discover that the murderer is an alien that is preparing to invade Earth, and they become the last hope of mankind on Earth.

60 | 2012-08-25 | Ellen E. Jones

If you can ignore the disturbing parallels with recent events, this middle-aged, Middle-American "Attack The Block" raises a laugh.

60 | 2012-07-26 | Betsy Sharkey

Some of the phallic jokes work, others are really lame. Fortunately there are many other funny bits that have nothing to do with body parts that keep the laughs coming.

60 | 2012-07-26 | James Rocchi

As broad as a barn yet as thin as paper, The Watch is a summertime action-comedy that works almost in spite of its overcrowded cast and loose, pulpy spitball of a plot.

55 | 2012-07-26 | Michelle Orange

It's not that The Watch is terrible – it's not not terrible, but there are sufficient diversions and more punitive ways to spend your evening – but that it's one of those smoke bomb comedies that seems to disappear even while you're watching, leaving no trace of itself behind.

50 | 2012-07-28 | Bilge Ebiri

Yes, it all gets kind of old, and yes, it's all over the place, but you'll probably find yourself laughing at least some of the time. Dick jokes, after all, can be pretty funny.

50 | 2012-07-27 | Connie Ogle

The body part joke to alien joke ratio seems slightly skewed in favor of the former, which makes the humor more than a little repetitive. How many different ways can one film say: "Men are idiots"?

50 | 2012-07-26 | Ann Hornaday

The Watch takes the same ethos of male bonding, obsession with sex and sardonic violence that has proved so profitable in recent years on yet another summer spin. The tires may be in need of changing pretty soon, but for now the jalopy still runs.

50 | 2012-07-26 | Claudia Puig

The film is one long Costco joke - but the punch line is never all that funny.

50 | 2012-07-26 | M. E. Russell

The end result is mediocre, slightly sloppy and a mild waste of a great cast.

50 | 2012-07-26 | Steven Rea

Reality aside, The Watch is harmless enough - and even occasionally humorous, in a riffy, sketch-comedy kind of way.

50 | 2012-07-26 | Justin Chang

What's onscreen feels as half-assed and juvenile as it was probably always envisioned to be, suggesting an umpteenth retelling of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by way of "The Hangover," or perhaps a far less inspired version of "Attack the Block" transplanted to small-town Ohio.

50 | 2012-07-26 | Bill Goodykoontz

It should be funnier. It should be better. Instead, it just sort of is.

50 | 2012-07-26 | Michael Phillips

It sticks in the craw. The whole movie does.

50 | 2012-07-26 | Joe Williams

If this movie wanders into your neighborhood, the only watch that will hold your attention is the timepiece on your wrist.

50 | 2012-07-25 | Keith Phipps

In spite of some prominently featured green slime and power-beam weaponry, it won't make anyone forget "Ghostbusters" anytime soon.

50 | 2012-07-25 | Roger Ebert

It's so determined to be crude, vulgar and offensive that after a while I grew weary. Abbott and Costello used to knock out funnier movies on this exact intellectual plane without using a single F, S, C, P or A word.

42 | 2012-07-26 | Rodrigo Perez

Certainly possesses a lot of energy, but it's never harnessed or focused effectively. As a buddy comedy, all four leads have done better, and you already know what those movies are, and this one doesn't stand among them.

42 | 2012-07-26 | Lisa Schwarzbaum

If this amateur justice league spent as much time analyzing clues as they did analyzing their junk, in every slang variation available in the Urban Dictionary, the murder mystery in The Watch could have been solved on the first night of surveillance.

40 | 2012-08-27 | William Thomas

Lacking the bite of "Attack The Block," Stiller and co. are happy to fall back on their usual shtick, with director Schaffer providing barely enough juice to power the laughs.

40 | 2012-07-28 | David Fear

There's a secret weapon embedded within The Watch, however, and his name is Richard Ayoade.

40 | 2012-07-27 | Scott Tobias

The Watch perks up when Ayoade's spacey line readings give it something unique and unexpected - otherwise, per Costco, audiences are buying their generic sci-fi comedy in bulk.

40 | 2012-07-26 | Stephen Holden

The movie builds to a human-versus-alien showdown so sloppily staged that it makes little visual sense. The bargain-basement pyrotechnics suggest that much of The Watch was filmed on autopilot on a strict budget.

40 | 2012-07-26 | Sheri Linden

Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn play the guys they always play in this sci-fi comedy misfire.

40 | 2012-07-26 | Marc Savlov

The Watch is awfully lightweight, and while it earns its R rating via some comic gore and a whole lot of hyper-sexualized tomfoolery, it's hardly the best work of anyone involved.

40 | 2012-07-26 | Richard Corliss

You're unlikely to laugh much, and you may get an unexpected case of the non-art-imitates-bad-life creeps.

38 | 2012-07-27 | Peter Travers

Then there's the movie itself, which should be crazy, stupid fun but settles for just stupid.

38 | 2012-07-26 | James Berardinelli

The Watch is a studio turd marinated in eau de skunk that stinks worse than week-old fish.

38 | 2012-07-26 | Ty Burr

It's another one of those loud, penis-obsessed bro farces, lazily written (by actor Seth Rogen, among others) and haphazardly directed.

38 | 2012-07-26 | Andrew Schenker

What's perhaps most off-putting about the movie isn't its increasingly stale humor, but the way it ultimately validates its characters' worst impulses.

25 | 2012-07-27 | Peter Rainer

It's a mash-up of blah buddy comedy and gross-out CGI monster splatter, with nary a laugh to be had.

25 | 2012-07-27 | Rick Groen

It's a dumb-ass comedy done strictly for a seriously large paycheque.

25 | 2012-07-27 | Kyle Smith

The danger of dreaming up a predictable adventure for a group of nobodies you hold in contempt is that the audience will see your indifference and raise you.

25 | 2012-07-26 | Mick LaSalle

As far as formulaic, empty and disappointing comedies go, The Watch is far from the worst. About every seven or eight minutes, perhaps a dozen times over the course of the picture, the movie generates a medium-size laugh. Not a big laugh.

0 | 2012-07-28 | Steve Persall

This messy mix of sci-fi horror and post-Superbad raunchiness didn't make me laugh once. Not a single snicker, chortle or smile.

0 | 2012-07-26 | Joe Neumaier

Every summer needs a super-turkey. So barring anything in the next 30 days that's the second coming of "Howard the Duck," the witless, completely terrible "comedy" now called The Watch should win hands-down.