Movie Review: 'Central Intelligence'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If only intelligence were more central to Central Intelligence.
But the script for this buddy comedy reads like the first draft of a project no one was interested in improving during production.
Casting alone must have seemed the ultimate triumph.
Of course, pairing bankables Wayne Johnson and Kevin Hart to co-star in a movie right about now must seem a Hollywood studio's dream, akin to signing two red-hot sluggers for a baseball team.
It also allows them to use a clever and suggestive tagline in their ads for Central Intelligence, describing their moviemaking formula as "a little Hart and a big Johnson."
Ex-wrestler and ex-"Rock" Johnson has lit up the box office in such thrillers and family films as The Scorpion King, Gridiron Gang, The Game Plan, Tooth Fairy, Furious 7, and San Andreas, among others,
Meanwhile, standup comic Hart has transitioned to movie stardom in such comedies as, also among others, Ride Along, Grudge Match, The Wedding Ringer, Get Hard, Think Like a Man, and About Last Night.
That certainly represents the commercially successful resumes of two screen actors who have seemed ubiquitous of late.
And both have stolen focus to the point where even when they have performed as members of an ensemble, it has – more often than not – seemed as if they were in a Dwayne Johnson or a Kevin Hart flick.
Ah, charismatic stardom.
And now they're appearing together.
But what of their comedic chemistry in Central Intelligence?
Well, let's just say that it's strained and underachieving. But, then, so is the movie that's built around it.
Central Intelligence is an action comedy involving a class reunion attended by Hart as Calvin Joyner, a former high school big-man-on-campus, most-likely-to-succeed title-holder, and popular jock who, long since those glory days, is now a soft-spoken accountant; and Johnson as Bob Stone, a CIA agent and lethal contract killer who, back in the day, was significantly overweight and was the humiliated object of considerable bullying.
But they have reunited through Facebook, and Stone has an international-espionage agenda not yet revealed that involves getting the kind of numbers-crunching help from Hart that he may not want to give -- something having to do with foiling a plot to sell classified military secrets.
The problem is, as you can imagine, Calvin's not exactly cut out for life-or-death shootouts. Or even cookouts.
If the plot sounds vaguely familiar, you may be recalling one of the two versions of The In-Laws, either the 1979 comedy with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin or the remade offering in 2003 with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks.
Director Rawson Marshall Thurber (We're the Millers, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh), with actor Ed Helms of the Hangover trilogy serving as one of his executive producers, works from a script that he co-wrote with Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen.
What's interesting about Thurber's casting choices is that he has, in a way, flip-flopped his leads' personas: Johnson, the busy action star, has been assigned the more clownish, broad-comedy role, while comedy superstar Hart is almost playing the proverbial straight man.
Almost.
But for long stretches of flat exposition, the film seems to forget that it's a comedy, generating far fewer laughs than it ought to be able to.
As for the two stars, who would probably be funnier just sitting and chatting, they have to work much too hard, and neither comes off very well, although Hart does get to show us a color on his acting palette that we haven't seen before.
Add to that unnecessarily extensive and pointless gunplay, sloppily staged action, bumpy continuity, and a convoluted narrative that doesn't connect the dots, and you have a movie coasting on laurels it hasn't earned.
So we'll reunite 2 stars out of 4. Central Intelligence is a halfhearted, high-concept hoo-ha with far too little haha.
