Rental Review - The Watch

The Watch (2012), R, 102 minutes - Ever wonder what your local neighborhood watch does?  Keep an eye on your house while you're out of town?  Make sure there are no unwanted loiterers running around?  Instill a sense of community and security?  How about sitting around arguing with each other and drinking beer before saving the world from an alien invasion?  As far fetched as that sounds, it is the basis for this comedy starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade.

Evan (Stiller) is a go-getter of a community man and the manager of the local Costco who organizes a neighborhood watch group after the security guard his store is brutally murdered.  Evan is quite serious about the crime and the continued potential threat to the neighborhood, but the only three guys to show up for his inaugural neighborhood watch meeting - Bob (Vaughn), Franklin (Hill), and Jamarcus (Ayoade) - see it more as an opportunity to hang out with the fellas.  A few typical buddy comedy scenarios play out with varying levels of adult humor and our heroes from the neighborhood watch luck their way into saving the community.

In Evan and Bob we get two characters that are right in line with past performances from Stiller and Vaughn.  Franklin and Jamarcus provide the awkward comedy.  Franklin because he's not very socially experienced and Jamarcus because he is British and black in a predominantly middle-class white neighborhood.  There are even cameos by Will Forte, Billy Crudup, and Doug Jones, although no one would recognize Jones as he does what he does best - play a creature/alien (a la his roles in the Hellboy films and Pan's Labyrinth).

The Watch is a fairly entertaining adult comedy.  It's worth a rental if you're looking for something to laugh at.  Especially if you're a fan of any of the main actors.  None of them do anything groundbreaking with The Watch, but they do bring recognizable roles to the table that get a few laughs.