Ride Along with Kevin Hart doing ridiculous
Ride Along is your typical buddy cop movie complete with sudden but inevitable and predictable betrayal and cliché ending. If you are going for a new experience or characters that are going to grow, you aren’t going to enjoy this film.
If on the other hand, you want to see a manic Kevin Hart yuck it up with the “hardcore” Ice Cube (who probably had one of the worst bad-ass moments ever in Ghost of Mars), this is the film for you. It takes a while for Hart to warm up, but Tika Sumpter, playing the girlfriend of Hart’s wannabe cop Ben Barber, carries the first several scenes with her sassy hotness contrasting with Hart’s goofy, egotistical cluelessness. It really isn’t until after a confrontation with Morris the Kid, played by Benjamin 'Lil P-Nut' Flores, who more than holds his own against Hart and whose character uses the typical ploy to get out of the confrontation, that Hart picks up the comedy a notch. Ice Cube, as the Brother that Ben Barber is trying to impress, plays angry, gruff and hardcore in this movie. He also has moments of comedy that come from within the character. Everyone else in the film is stereotypical filler that you would expect to find in a parody. You’ve seen this film at least a dozen times. Eddie Murphy did it better in 48 Hours with Nick Nolte and Beverly Hills Cop with the Judge Reinhold and John Ashton. Danny Glover and Mel Gibson did it better in Lethal Weapon. However, Ride Along does deliver Hart’s manic brand of comedy with bravado and a bevy of short jokes, especially since Laurence Fishburne’s head alone looks to be the same size as Hart. |
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