'Stuber' Review

Stuber is a 2019 action comedy film directed by Michael Dowse and written by Tripper Clancy. It stars Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Bautista, Iko Uwais, Natalie Morales, Betty Gilpin, Jimmy Tatro, Mira Sorvino, and Karen Gillan.

A mild-mannered Uber driver named Stu picks up a grizzled detective who is hot on the trail of a sadistic, bloodthirsty terrorist and finds himself thrust into a harrowing ordeal where he has to keep his wits, himself unharmed, and work with his passenger while maintaining his high-class rating.

I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed Stuber. It was a very high energy film that was flat out fun to watch.

I thought it was hilarious, and most of the jokes landed for me. Something about Bautista road raging at a car parked 30 feet in front of him was hilarious.

With that being said the premise of this film was very stupid. It was basically a visually impaired cop hires an Uber driver to help him take down this criminal. It really is ridiculous, but what I loved about this film was the fact that it embraced it. It knew how dumb it was and just took us along for the ride. It even poked fun at itself, and the buddy cop genre.

This wasn't the most original film of the year. It was a very basic film in terms of plot, story, structure, the characters and their arcs. However the film was entertaining enough to make the lack of originality seem small.

I did like the arc Kumail Nanjiani's character got. It starts off exactly as you would expect, but then they did something different that I really liked.

This definitely wasn't a great film, and it's not going to get any Oscars or achievements. However it's a hilariously fun summer buddy cop film that embraces and haves fun with all the ridiculousness that is this film.

I was surprised by how much a actually enjoyed Stuber.

The acting was solid. Dave Bautista proved he could be the leading man in a film. I thought his comedic timing was great. Kumail Nanjiani was hilarious, and he also had great comedic timing. I also really liked the chemistry between the two.

Karen Gillan was also in the film for short bit, and she was fine. I don't really know the other actors all that well, but they too did a solid job. In a comedy acting usually isn't the main source of emphasis, but here it was really good. No it's not Oscar worthy, but you can tell everybody was really putting in all their effort.

Again solid acting all around.

The story and plot were definitely the weakest parts of the film. Again it's not that original and really basic. If you've seen any other buddy cop film then you probably already know how this film's going to go. The same can be said about the characters and their arcs.

However the film understood this, and accepts the tropes and cliches. A lot of films with basic plots try to make them sound more sophisticated then they really are, but thankfully Stuber doesn't do that.

Again it is a very basic story and plot, but it's handled well enough.

Overall I really did enjoy Stuber. It's not a great film by any means, but it was hilariously stupid buddy cop comedy that I had a really fun time with.