The Watch

The Watch is a great example of how previews can mislead you. I expected to be in for a rollicking good time but actually was given some laughs and the feeling that I had been cheated.
Just because you throw together a bunch of old action stars and come up with a hilarious send up of their genre (Expendables) doesn't mean you can put a few funny people in the same film and make it work.
Evan (Ben Stiller) runs the local Costco, the running club, the Spanish table and a host of other community events but when a beloved employee is murdered he decides to take it upon himself to find the killer and sets up Neighbourhood Watch as the police are rather insipid.
An eclectic group of interested parties turn up to the first meeting - Bob (Vince Vaughn) is a man's man looking for a bunch of guys to hang out with, Franklin (Jonah Hill) is a rather manic wannabe cop who likes the idea of a vigilante group and Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade) who is a British recent arrival in town who seeks illicit encounters with local Asian women.
It soon becomes apparent that the murder was done by an alien and we're thrown into another alien invasion plotline.
Some of it works but most of it doesn't. Stiller is Stiller, control freak not unlike his Meet The Parents character; Vaughn is his usual chatty, over the top self, Hill isn't bad and seems to enjoy playing a loose cannon. I was most disappointed by Ayoade, who I love in the IT Crowd. I just couldn't buy 'Moss' saying a lot of the things he said in this film and his comic timing went criminally unused.
I don't really need to go any further.
If you must see this then lower your expectations, it does have some pretty good moments but overall it really shouldn't be classed as a comedy because it's not really that funny. A 5 out of 10.