Not much to ‘Watch’

As far as formulaic, empty and disappointing comedies go, "The Watch" is far from the worst. About every seven or eight minutes, perhaps a dozen times over the course of the picture, the movie generates a medium-size laugh. Not a big laugh — there’s not a big laugh to be found anywhere on the premises here — but not a tiny one, either. We’re talking about a dozen or so taken-by-surprise, spontaneous and genuine "Ha!" moments. And always one "ha," never two.

Yet even with that, "The Watch" inspires the wrong kind of laugh, because the things that are funny in it have little to do with the script and nothing to do with the story or the characters. They all have to do with a viewer’s familiarity with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill. If you start off thinking those guys are funny, which they are, you’ll be ready to laugh, and every so often something in their delivery or energy will allow a laugh to happen.

But there can be no building one laugh on the other, not at any point in "The Watch," because there’s not a thing to build on — no emotional truth, no character relationships, and no story we’re meant to take seriously, even in terms of comedy. It doesn’t feel like a movie that was made with love, even in the planning phase, but like a business plan involving certain bankable actors and a story something like "Ghostbusters."

Stiller is at the center as a driven, energetic guy who works as a manager at Costco, a job that he loves but that the movie wants us to see as ridiculous. But what is so ridiculous about working at Costco? That’s a good American business. And what is so terrible about a guy, working at Costco, liking his job and feeling OK about himself? There’s an air of condescension about "The Watch," an unconscious assumption of superiority that is very Hollywood and in the worst way.

When a Costco night watchman is murdered at the store one night under very strange circumstances — he is skinned alive — Evan (Stiller) gets the idea to start a neighborhood watch. He gets three volunteers: Hill, playing a mama’s boy prone to violence; Richard Ayoade, as an Englishman who just wants to meet girls; and Vaughn, playing what he usually plays, a fellow who talks a lot, thinks he’s smarter than he is, and just wants to have a good time.

Not surprisingly, Vaughn gets most of the laughs, and Stiller is relegated to playing straight man. But Stiller fares even worse, in that his character is written as a humorless, dour control freak. That’s a rather odd choice for a comedy.

Early in the film, the movie tips its hand as to what the neighborhood watch is up against, but the story takes its time getting where it’s going. In the meantime, there are many (mildly) comic detours, scene after scene of the men hanging out and talking or going about doing demented things. For example, they find a weapon that incinerates objects with a laser, and so they go around the neighborhood blowing up things for fun. If the idea at work here is that they’re idiots, we get the idea.

When the comedy runs out of gas, the movie introduces some fake sentiment and an action scene that mixes cartoon violence with jokes about genitalia. But that description might make it seem more amusing than it is.

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