Ride Along: Movie Review

Director Tim Story is one of the most mediocre directors making mainstream movies today.  Sure, 2002’s “Barbershop and 2012’s “Think Like a Man” were pretty decent, but the less said about 2004’s “Taxi” and the two “Fantastic Four” films, the better.  Story’s new film “Ride Along” is actually very much like “Taxi”.  A lame buddy, action, comedy, with not much action and not much comedy.  If it wasn’t for the casting of Kevin Heart , there would most likely be no laughs at all.  “Ride Along” is pretty bad.

Ben Barber (Kevin Heart), wants to be a police officer. Not happy with his job as a school security guard, Ben wants to prove that he can do more.  He also wants to earn the respect of his girlfriend’s cop brother James (Ice Cube).  James doesn’t like Ben and nothing would make the hard-hitting street cop happier than if he could get his out of his sister’s life.  With the hopes of scaring Ben out of going to the police academy, James offers to take the video game loving security guard on a ride along.  What Ben doesn’t know is that James is planning to have a little fun with his soon-to-be brother-in-law.

“Ride Along” takes absolutely no risks here, not even with the humor. The screenplay is paint-by-numbers and we know exactly who the bad guys are going to be within the film’s first fifteen minutes.  When the opening credits were showing the cast, as soon as I saw one name pop up, I knew that was going to be the main bad guy. Ice Cube is usually ok in comedy, but here, he just seems bored. I guess that will happen if your co-star is sucking up all the films laughs…all two of them (maybe three).  To be fair, Kevin Heart is giving it his all to try and breathe some life into “Ride Along” and I give him credit, because anything that was remotely funny was solely him.

“Ride Along” isn’t boring, it just isn’t good.  It is one of those films you can watch on at home on TV, walk away for a half hour and not miss a single thing.  If you plan on going to the movies this weekend, you should move along from seeing “Ride Along”.

By: Marc Ferman