I’m not sure why I’m even bothering to write anything about this movie. It just does not work. I’ve never been a great fan of American situational comedy which all too often depends of the farcical and stupid to get a laugh.

This is a movie which just does not work for me. It is in some ways similar to Grabbers (see below) in that it involves a group of locals trying to defend their home from an alien invasion. That is where the comparison ends. The Watch is at the polar opposite  end of the scale to Grabbers. Don’t bother with it.  When I started this blog I ranted about W.E., the horror that Ms. Madonna inflicted on us. I said then it was technically one of the worst movies I had ever seen. Well, The Watch is not far behind, it just did not work.

Akiva Schaffer (Saturday Night Live, 2005-2011)  directed this movie and his lack of experience shows. The story evolves around small town store manager Evan, (Ben Stiller, Zoolander, 2001) forming a neighbourhood watch. The only takers are a rag-bag bunch of; Bob, the family guy (Vince Vaughan, Couples Retreat, 2009); Franklin, the want-to-be GI Joe (Jonah Hill, Moneyball, 2011) and Jamarcus the English IT guy…in every sense, ( The IT Crowd, 2006-).

After the usual male bonding and compensatory attempts at humour the team go out on patrol and quickly realise something is wrong. People are dying and going missing and Evan’s super-store seems to the centre of all that is happening. After more stupidity they eventually start to fight the aliens and ultimately of course win – sorry if I spoiled the ending. It seems that rather than try to find humour in the fight with the aliens the writers put in a load of male insecurity  and team building jokes which, all too regularly, seem like they are there just to fill time.

The supporting cast ranges from the usual fodder to the down-right stupid.  his movie is not funny, the attempts at humour are forced and often badly delivered. There is big difference between scripting a 3 or 5 minute comedy sketch and directing a 90+ minute feature.  This movie feels like the writers, who for the sake of their careers, I won’t name, came up one night with the outline of a movie and then as they had ideas filled in the missing bits over the next few days or weeks as they had a beer or two.

Rating 4/10 and I’m not even sure why I am being so generous. This movie is simply not good, W.E. was a vicious assault on the brain. Some people like the Stiller brand on anarchistic, lowest common denominator humour, not me.  Watch this at your own risk and remember it is time you will never get back. Or maybe this was a sketch which grew legs, that was the  nasty monster here.