The Watch (2012)

This was an example of a good premise executed horribly. The best thing I can say about this film is that it was mildly entertaining with about a total of 10 minutes worth seeing. The rest of this film was just horrible, for many reasons. This is quite unfortunate, because the cast was a group of guys I really like.and although I try to never have expectations, I honestly did expect this film to be much better. This was just an all around bad movie that tried way too hard to be something it just wasn’t.

The Watch (2012) was directed by Akiva Schaffer and written by Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade. The story revolves around a man named Evan (Stiller) who works as a manager at a Costco. One night one of the Costco employees is mysteriously murdered, and Evan takes it upon himself to form a neighborhood watch in order to track down the murderer. What this vigilante group uncovers is an alien presence in their town, and it's up to the group to stop an alien invasion before it wipes out the entire planet.

I did a little research to find out why this movie was as bad as it was. This is the classic pitfall where a movie gets passed around and changed too many times during production. The entire project should have been scrapped, because the end product is clearly not what they set out to do. For one thing, the entire movie was a Costco commercial. The movie should have been called Costco: shameless promotion at its worst. Also, the script just wasn’t that funny. The jokes fell flat for the most part, and the crude jokes felt like they were trying too hard. The film just felt like an all around failure. Even Vince Vaughn, who I normally like, came across as annoying in this film.

The only positive was the special effects, which were very well done. Other than that, I would recommend this film to nobody.

• The film was made on a budget of 68 million, and the worldwide gross was 68.2 million.
• It was released on July 27, 2012 and produced and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.
• David Dobkin was originally going to direct with Will Ferrell in the leading role, but the duo fell out in summer 2009.
• The movie was filmed in Georgia, USA.
• Chris Tucker was considered for the role of Jamarcus.
• The movie was originally titled "Neighborhood Watch", but was changed due to sensitivity over the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.
• Thomas Lennon auditioned for the role of Paul.
• Jared Stern wrote the screenplay in 2008 with a teen audience in mind. The writing duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were later brought in to convert the story to an R rated script.
• By taking a role in the film, Jonah Hill had to drop out of Quentin Tarentino's Django Unchained, a part he had regarded as the perfect stepping stone for him to legitimize his credentials as a dramatic actor. Various delays in production on Tarentino's project meant that Hill was still able to appear in the movie.