Ride Along

Dir: Tim Story

2014

**

The 'buddy cop' movie is tired and a little tiresome these days and 2014’s Ride Along does nothing to refresh genre. Here, Ice Cube (who once again takes himself far too seriously) plays a hard-nosed police detective called James who takes calculated risks but takes no prisoners. His sister, whom he grew up in an orphanage with, is his only family and he is very protective of her. Her boyfriend Ben (played by Kevin Hart) is a high-school security guard and computer game enthusiast with aspirations of being a police officer. When Ben asks James for his blessing to marry his sister, James suggests he join him for a 'Ride along' to see if he's got what it takes to be a police officer and if he can prove to him that he is man enough to protect his would be wife. The original idea was for Ben to be a white psychotherapist, presumably because white psychotherapists are the most pathetic of all men in some people's opinion? Thankfully they decided not to go down the black vs white road, although I would guess that they changed this just so they could cast America's number one comedian at the time over anything else. It is exactly like every other 'buddy cop' comedy action film you have ever seen before, although it isn't the funniest, nor does it have the best action. It is the most formulaic of formulas and it is astonishing that films like this are still being made. Kevin Hart is one of the funnier funny characters in this continuation of the serious cop/funny cop theme but Ice Cube is dead weight in the serious role. While Ice Cube's character is standard and rather boring, Kevin Hart's character is badly written, with his character's interest in computer games taking the story to an overly stupid level. It has its moments but literally only a handful and most of these come thanks to a couple Hart's quick one-liners. It's really nothing special but then it was never going to be my cup of tea in the first place. This sort of film has its place, it didn't bother me in the slightest and the fact there is a sequel doesn't surprise or annoy me, it's just not for me.