The Watch

When Evan Trautwig (Stiller) is forced by his wife to move from the city to the suburbs following the murder of a friend, his life takes a turn for the boring. Eventually, he decides, along with Bob (Vaughn), Franklin (Hill) and Jamarcus (Ayoade) to create a Neighbourhood Watch group in order to allow them briefly to escape the drudgery of their home lives. However, the group soon find themselves thrust into actual work when an alien invasion begins and they find themselves as Earth’s first, last and only line of defence.

With a script by frequent collaborators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg of Knocked Up fame, and directed by Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer, you’d expect The Watch to be comically strong, and it is, with some great laugh-out loud moments of the normal and gross-out variety. It’s helped along by the fact that the film never remotely takes itself seriously and stays ridiculous from start to end, even amongst all the sci-fi weirdness occurring.

All four main actors put in good performances; Stiller, Vaughn and Hill all look to be at home in what is their speciality: big comedies. Though this is Ayoade’s (Moss from The IT Crowd) first big American film, he handles himself perfectly and steals the scenes when given half a chance. The supporting cast all do fine, the standout being Billy Crudup as a creepy neighbour.

In short, The Watch is a fun summer sci-fi comedy that works as a great antidote to the po-faced seriousness of other genre films like Cowboys and Aliens whilst still being great on its own merits.

Tom Freeman