The Watch Movie Review

The Watch
                                                

The Watch is a comedy science fiction fantasy movie released in 2012. This movie was previously known as Neighborhood Watch. It is written by Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and directed by Akiva Schaffer. The main characters of the movie The Watch are played by Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, Rosemarie DeWitt, Will Forte and Billy Crudup.

The Watch is about a group of men who forms a neighborhood watch club when one of their colleagues is brutally murdered. Then they find the existence of aliens on earth and learn about the aliens’ plan to invade earth.

A scene from the movie The Watch

Plot:

The Watch starts with showing the life of Evan, who is the senior manager of a local superstore of Glenview, Ohio. One of his colleagues get American citizenship one day and on that very night, gets brutally killed by some strange thing while he was on duty on that superstore.

Evan learns about the murder on the next day when he goes to the office. The police don’t seem much eager to solve the case of the murder. So, on the break of a local popular game, Evan asks the people from the neighborhood to join him in his club that will protect the neighborhood and find the murderer. People also don’t seem eager to his request.

So at the desired day, only three other men come to form the club. One of them was Bob, who is facing problem regarding the relation with his daughter. Then there is Franklin, who wanted to join the local police force and got rejected. The last one is Jamarcus who is recently divorced.

They name their club as The Neighborhood Watch. They make their jerseys, post the flyers with Evan’s number and start patrolling the neighborhood at night. They also have fun among themselves, which annoys Evan. At first, the local people and the police take them as a joke.

But people keep on getting murdered on the neighborhood. One night, while patrolling, Evan hits something with his car. The thing leaves some strange body parts and some green liquid. The Watch also finds a metal ball nearby, which has an extraordinary power to blow up things.

Evan and Bob share their personal life problems with each other. Evan is infertile, but cannot tell it to his wife. Bob urges him that he must admit it to his wife.

One night, following a call from a man who reports unusual noise around his house, The Watch finds an alien. They hit the alien and bring that into Bob’s house. The alien wakes up there and then escapes with the metal ball, but tells them that the aliens are now living among the humans. So The Watch starts to look for aliens disguised as humans.

They suspects Evan’s neighbor as an alien. At one night, they go to that neighbor’s house to investigate. There Bob learns that his daughter is going to a special party. To stop her, Bob leaves with Franklin. That neighbor catches Evan and Jamarcus and he invites them inside. After going there, they find that they are mistaken and then Evan leaves.

When Bob returns, Evan accuses Bob for his disobedience. Bob and Franklin then throw Evan out of The Watch for his autocracy. Evan returns home and admits his condition to wife. His wife accepts it and later helps The Watch. Then Jamarcus comes to Evan’s house.

Next, The Neighborhood Watch meets again in Bob’s house. Jamarcus tells them about the plan of the aliens, that is, the aliens are soon going to invade and destroy the earth. So the fate of mankind is now depending on the actions of The Neighborhood Watch.

My review about the movie The Watch:

First of all, I didn’t like The Watch.

The plot of The Watch was not bad, although it didn’t seem something extraordinary. The idea of comedy with mixture of sci-fi, horror and fantasy seemed innovative. The ending was predictable, but the identity of the alien disguised as human will surprise you. Other than that, there was no interesting twist in the plot. The direction seemed good.

The weakest point of The Watch was the poor screenplay. The screenplay has failed to make this movie interesting or funny at all. From the beginning of the movie, you will understand it as a comedy one (you can also predict it from the casting), but the comedy elements of The Watch were not good at all. The use of humor was not entertaining enough and I doubt that any scene of the whole movie will be able to make you laugh. Just a better humor could make this movie far better. The characters themselves and the interaction between them were good, but character developments of some of the major characters were poor. You may find nothing in The Watch, which may keep you attached to the film. At some parts, it may seem boring.

The casting of The Watch is very good and all the major characters have acted well. The dialogues were good, but they could be funnier. Most of the humor of this movie comes from dialogues, where most of them are adult humor. The make-ups and the costumes were good too, especially the make-ups of the aliens.

The special effects were used at a very minimal level. More use of special effect could make The Watch more interesting. The music, sound effects, lighting, camera works and the set design were also good.

The Watch had excessive use of adult humor, some nude scenes and some gore scenes, which makes it not appropriate for kids.

So, finally, I didn’t enjoy watching The Watch at all. Most likely, it will not be able to satisfy you when you look for comedy, science fiction or horror elements. By seeing a little better than average IMDB rating of 5.7 (while I’m writing this review) may make you think its overrated there. I will not recommend watching The Watch to any movie lover.

To know more about it:

IMDB Link: The Watch IMDB

Wikipedia Link: The Watch Wikipedia

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To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, you can find the best deal on it here: The Watch Movie