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Created Aug 01, 2012 11:35PM PST • Edited Aug 02, 2012 06:46AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Really funny and occasionally inspired, often lewd and occasionally disgusting, The Watch features heavy drinkers facing off against an alien menace. Hardly humanity’s best and brightest representatives, Vince Vaughn and crew are more like our best boneheads and ballbusting nitwits.

   The combo of supernatural beings and deadly-mean comedy feels like An American Werewolf in London crossed with Observe and Report. The latter makes perfect sense, since Seth Rogen cowrote The Watch.

   Still funny is funny, even if it’s below-the-belt humor from start to finish. For instance, Vince Vaughn has a hot high school daughter so we can see Vince the Dad argue with her about posting a tongue-sucking video on Facebook, but also so Vaughn and his Neighborhood Watch buddies can bust her at a raging house party full of girls gone wild. How convenient.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   The Neighborhood Watch

   • Ben Stiller in a classic role for him. IOW, it could have been equally well played by Steve Carell. You know, the nice guy who’s too earnest and earns his laughs through debasement.
   • Vince Vaughan – lean again and still mean – has one of his better Vince Vaughn roles, arguably better even than Wedding Crashers.
   • Jonah Hill plays a psycho scary guy, which is turning into a stock role for him. It was a bit tougher to laugh at this given that a true psycho just shot up a movie theater in the Dark Knight Massacre.
   • Richard Ayoade – a Brit with an unpronounceable name – mellows out the proceedings in quite agreeable fashion. Jamarcus is always welcome.

   Supporting Players

   • Will Forte plays a nearsighted cop, whose vision is perhaps his best policing asset. Get it…
   • R. Lee Ermey plays a pissed off homeowner with a shotgun. Sarge from Toy Story has the best holler in the movies.
   • Nicholas Braun plays a fortunate son who makes out with Vaughn’s hot daughter, except Braun’s hardly moviestar handsome. Perhaps that is part of the producers’ plan, placing normal looking guys with hot chicks.
   • Rosemarie DeWitt as Stiller’s wife, ovulating and on-the-clock.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Neighborhood Watch was the original title, until George Zimmerman’s Target run led to real-life tragedy.

    Why form a Neighborhood Watch? Because crime is happening in the hood, home invasion in the case of Zimmerman’s Sanford, alien invasion in the case of our Hard R celluloid heroes. The latter generally see their self-deputized status as an opportunity to partay, while Seth Rogen and his fellow writers see an opportunity for wall-to-wall below-the-belt humor. Fortunately the opportunity isn’t squandered, as their film is flat-out hilarious, albeit crude, rude and socially unacceptable.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.6

    The nasty rudeness isn’t so much because of foul words as foul sentiments and glimpses of weird sex. Most of it is hetero from an adolescently male POV, though three guys appear in the credits as “Casual Wankers.” They appear in the movie in less, if you get my drift.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Fierce 1.6

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.5

    You have to feel for the producers. Here they’ve delivered a really funny movie, albeit one that is morally execrable. The only upstanding thing about it is the concept of the Neighborhood Watch, and that went all to hell with the Trayvon Martin killing. Hence the title change from Neighborhood Watch to The Watch.

    Perhaps they should have stuck to their guns (so to speak). After all, it appears that George Zimmerman was trying to do the right thing by leading his neighborhood watch after a series of robberies and home invasions in and around his house, as reported by Reuters in George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.5

23. Biological Fantasy 4.1

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0