The Watch (Akiva Schaffer, 2012)

Expectations should not be set too high when a Ben Stiller comedy also includes the obligatory Vince Vaughn and/or Owen Wilson, but this film really exhausts any residual goodwill from previous semi-successful collaborations such as Starsky & Hutch. No effort at all has been made to give them characters beyond easily marketable clones of their past roles, so Stiller is the uptight sensible one and Vaughn the blabbering foul-mouthed slob, as they take on invading aliens in their sleepy home town. There is gore at childish levels but no thrills to back it up, and the comedy side of the affair, barring a few isolated quips, is a barren revisitation of scatological and priapic staples. What TV comedy icon Richard Ayoade was doing signing up for this cynically masturbatory exercise is anyone's guess.

3/10