{"id":32986,"date":"2012-12-15T12:06:42","date_gmt":"2012-12-15T12:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=32986"},"modified":"2012-12-15T12:09:34","modified_gmt":"2012-12-15T12:09:34","slug":"the-watch-dvd-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/the-watch-dvd-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Watch DVD review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seemingly a way point en route to some sort of cinematic Last Of The Summer Wine<\/em>, Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn have never seemed further away from their creative high \u2013 that golden half decade that gave us The Cable Guy<\/em>, Happy Gilmore<\/em> and brought them together in Zoolander<\/em> before the real studio mega-hits began in earnest and their original fanbase quietly grew up, lost interest, and got pilots licenses, children, or complicated socket sets to devote their time to.<\/p>\n

Now both bookending the 40s, their once youthful vitality and arrested adolescence that kept them high on the viewing agenda in frat houses everywhere has motored them into a corner where they scrabble at the brickwork, looking for some way out.<\/p>\n

Puerile sci-fi comedy The Watch<\/em> definitely isn’t it \u2013 a sort of dispiriting cross between 2009’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop<\/em> and 2001’s\u00a0Evolution<\/em> as a clique of small town losers defy rivals and defeat an alien invasion \u2013 all the while finding time for a recurring joke about alien goo being the same consistency as ejaculate.<\/p>\n

It’s not funny when it’s phrased like that, is it? Don’t worry, it’s not funny at all so we haven’t spoilt it.<\/p>\n

With Stiller playing Ben Stiller Neurotic Character #54 and Vaughn playing Vince Vaughan Obtuse Slob #32 there’s perhaps a hope that their spiritual successor Jonah Hill (Superbad<\/em>, Knocked-Up<\/em>) or cult favourite Richard Ayoade (The Mighty Boosh<\/em>, The IT Crowd<\/em>) will do all the work for them and somehow rescue their reputations in the eyes of the elusive 13-17\/18-25 demographic \u2013 instead it’s sort of the dumb comedy equivalent of The Expendables<\/em>, with Hill as Jason Statham and Ayoade as one of the wrestlers nobody’s heard of.<\/p>\n

R Lee Ermey’s in it too, because having R Lee Ermey in anything means you need to create one less character \u2013 that’s more time you can spend writing jizz jokes.<\/p>\n

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