Stiller plays Evan Trautwig, an enthusiastic and community-minded supermarket manager who forms the Neighbourhood Watch of the title after a friend and employee is murdered. Vaughn plays Bob Finnerty, a protective father who joins the team as an excuse to spy on his teenage daughter, Jonah Hill plays the somewhat unhinged wannabe-cop Franklin and Richard Ayoade rounds the team out as recently-divorced Brit Jamarcus. The motley crew has to pull themselves together and come to grips with a tangible threat of extraterrestrial invasion; the creatures planning to start their planet-wide takeover in their humble town.
The Watch was originally titled The Neighbourhood Watch, and its marketing campaign had to be overhauled after the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin by a neighbourhood watch captain in Florida, the filmmakers wishing to distance themselves from the incident. In an odd way, it is a good thing the film ended up being a critical and commercial failure in the States because it is just really bad. Director Akiva Schaffer has a cameo in the film along with his band mates from the musical comedy group Lonely Island they are credited as “Casual Wankers #1, #2 and #3, and that alone should give you an idea of just how puerile the film really is.
What`s unfortunate about this film beyond the bad timing of its promotion and release is how easy it really is to get something fun and entertaining out of the premise, and how much a failure it turned out to be in that aspect. This is a movie about a bunch of somewhat-regular small town guys who team up to defend their neighbourhood from an alien attack films along these lines such as the earlier-alluded-to Ghostbusters, last year`s sleeper hit Attack the Block and Super 8 achieved success, and The Watch easily could have.
However, instead of a jaunty sci-fi action-adventure comedy, we got a stale, bloated and almost unbearably crass film, in effect a gathering of four comedians who spend most of the running time hanging around making bodily function jokes. Even the usual likability of Ben Stiller is drowned out by the coarseness that surrounds him. The comedic chops of Richard Ayoade similarly fall victim to this, and it`s a bit of a pity as this is the talented and funny Brit`s first major Hollywood film outing. The Watch panders to the lowest common denominator in the extreme, quickly degenerating into an unending flood of off-colour unfunniness, whatever impact the profane language or outrageous frat boy humour might have had completely eroded away by the time the finale rolls around at last.
Said finale is easily the best part of the film, a moderately exciting melee between Evan`s crew (with his wife Abby, played by Rosemarie DeWitt, tagging along) and the aliens, who have been holed up below the Costco supermarket where Evan works, awaiting the day of their attack. The combination of suit performer Doug Jones` work, animatronics/prosthetics effects and CGI used to create them are of reasonably high quality and the showdown between the eponymous neighbourhood watch and the hostile aliens is what audiences came to see, but it truly is a case of too little too late. Adding to all this unpleasantness is the veritable melange of product placement, which is one of the “benefits of partially setting the film in a Costco.
At one point in the film, Jonah Hill`s character Franklin gripes about getting alien gunk in his mouth. We don`t know what that would taste like and frankly don`t want to, but would hazard a guess that it might be comparable to sitting through this tripe.
SUMMARY: You`ll be spending most of this movie checking your watch, and when you`re done you`ll be counting the brain cells you lost while seeing it.
RATING: 1.5 out of 5 STARS
Jedd Jong