THE WATCH

20th Century Fox

Rated R

Running time: 102 Minutes



Click below to watch The Watch trailer.




In 20th Century Fox's The Watch, Ben Stiller forms a neighborhood watch - and soon discovers that their neighborhood is being invaded by aliens.

When his newly American citizen security guard Joe Nunez is killed at his store, Costco manager Ben Stiller makes an announcement at the local high school football game that he intends to find the killer and starts a neighborhood watch composed of Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade to see if they can search for the killer. As they bumble through being a neighborhood watch amongst the quirky neighbors, rowdy teenagers gone wild, and the local small-town hick police Will Forte and Mel Rodriguez as the Watch looks for the killer, the Watch soon run into aliens hidden amongst the neighbors in the neighborhood as more people are killed for their skins and that anybody could be an alien amongst them.

A combination of Ghostbusters meets ET and Aliens, with the film co written by Seth Rogen, this was a cute science fiction comedy about aliens invading a neighborhood. Although I can not recall why they wanted to invade that out of the way neighborhood, so the reason did not make an impression on me. However, I thought the movie was funny.

With lonely Stiller continually forming groups that he is in charge of, Stiller's put upon and baby-starved wife Rosemarie DeWitt wants Stiller home so they can have a child and must compete with Stiller's new group - The Neighborhood Watch. Fellow Watch member Vaughn meanwhile designs their logo and has to deal with his teen aged daughter Erin Moriarty and her horny boyfriend Nicholas Braun, of whom Vaughn did not like at all. 

The core group of Stiller, Vaughn, Hill and Ayoade made a nice group for the Watch - a group similar to The Ghostbusters - although Ayoade does not have the star power of the others. I had never heard of Ayoade before, and Ayoade was much more subtle in his characterization when compared to the others - especially with wanting sex with an Asian housewife. Hill was a typical Jonah Hill character. R Lee Ermey was great in one of his rare non-military roles as a cantankerous gun-wielding neighbor. Billy Crudup was an appropriately creepy new neighbor for Stiller. I liked that DeWitt eventually became an unofficial part of the watch.

It is too bad that this movie did not get much promotion as I thought this was a fun movie. With Stiller being a manager at Costco, a lot of the jokes and scenes take place at the Costco store as well as the jokes happening throughout the neighborhood. The couple behind me were laughing a lot at this movie. Unfortunately, due to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida shot by a neighborhood watch captain, 20th Century Fox altered their marketing for this movie. These changes in marketing, as well as the various events of the 2012 summer season and the movie's R rating, is what I believed helped kill the movie as I saw very little marketing for The Watch. I am also sure the film would have done better as a PG-13 film.

Rated R for language, sexual situations, violence. Running time: 102 Minutes

Click below to watch another trailer of The Watch.



Pancho
All people smile in the same language.
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