RIDE ALONG
PG-13
99 Minutes
Director: Tim Story
Writers: Greg Coolidge, Jason Mantzoukas, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Tika Sumpter

CAST
Ice Cube… James Payton
Kevin Hart…Ben Barber
John Leguizamo…Santiago
Bruce McGill…Lt. Brooks
Tika Sumpter…Angela Payton
Laurence Fishburne…Omar

Fuck The Police

Ice-T paved the way for other former rappers to play cops, like LL Cool J in NCIS: Los Angeles. So it’s not much of a shock to see AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted play a cop in film. Still, a rapper playing a cop, that’s crazy. It’s like Dr. Dre becoming a business person.

This isn’t a buddy-cop movie. That genre is too cliché. RIDE ALONG is about two men in a squad car, that don’t get along very well.

We Be (Billy) Clubbin’

Okay, let me set this movie up for you. James Payton, is on a high-speed chase, with foreign criminals, he destroys half the town, without apprehending the suspect. But, wait, there’s a twist: the police chief is an angry jerk. And this incident really pisses him off. Oh man, Ice Cube is a loose cannon.

Ben Barber is a security guard. He was just accepted into the police academy. But before he starts basic training; Ben wants to go on a ride along…with his very abrasive, future brother-in-law.

Every bad cop movie needs a villain. In this movie, it’s THE MATRIX guy. No, not that MATRIX guy, the one whose daughter does porn. Anyway, he plays the kingpin of an international criminal enterprise.

We don’t find out until the end that the other cops in the force are crooked. And they’re working for the kingpin. Laurence Fishburne makes an enticing offer to Ice Cube: work for me, and I won’t shoot you, and c’mon, we’d make good partners. But Ice Cube has far too much integrity to accept the deal.

This film unfolds as you would expect: it doesn’t. If only it wasn’t a little more self-aware. They could’ve worked the satirical angle. Like THE HEAT.

Kevin Hart has overextended himself. He’s trying too hard to be the next Eddie Murphy. That last standup special was very half-Harted. As a comedian, you can get away with being a funny guy that appears in bad movies, like Chris Rock. But if you’re an unfunny comedian, that appears in bad movies, then you’re Martin Lawrence.

I’m a fan of Ice Cube’s road trip movies…I mean his music. So it’s tough for me to criticize him. But he’s become what he’s always despised: a studio gangsta.

Today was not a good day.

Final Verdict: 10 out of 100
Sidenote: Brace yourself, there are rumors of a sequel

21 JUMP STREET
R
109 Minutes
Directors: Phil Lord, Chris Miller Writers: Michael Bacall (screenplay), Michael Bacall (story), Jonah Hill
Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube

This may be hard to believe, but I watched a lot of TV as a young kid. 21 Jump Street just wasn't on my radar, probably because it wasn't a cartoon, and it didn't have a laugh track. It’s the show that launched Johnny Depp's career, he departed after a few seasons to make Edward Scissorhands (1990).

21 Jump Street doesn't take it self too seriously. Almost like a movie Judd Apatow would make. This film is completely unoriginal, but in a good way. A celebration of cheesy clichés. Which includes a one-dimensional, multicultural criminal syndicate.

2005 was a much simpler time. The only means of communication kids had were: email, text messaging, instant messaging, MySpace, analog paper notes, Morse Code, and soup cans. Schmidt and Jenko went to the same high school, seven years ago. Schmidt was a dork in high school, and the other guy was a football star. Things are different this time around. Schmidt becomes popular, and it really gets to his head.

Ice cube plays the police captain Captian Tennill Dickson; which is like Ron Jeremy teaching sex-ed at an all-girls Catholic school.

Their assignment: to infiltrate a high school, and arrest young girls that would be involved in statutory rape. But really, they need to find the source of a deadly, new synthetic drug. A drug that makes you see the color of time.

There’s a bitchin' party at the parents house. They buy a couple kegs, and steal drugs from the evidence locker back at the station. You can guess what happens here. The parents come back early from vacation. Schmidt becomes the coolest mac-daddy at school.

Glory days, glory daze

It's your typical high school revenge fantasy: shooting classmates...on film...in a pretend movie. This is the real revenge of the nerds.

Look at that Andrea character on 90210. She was well into her 30s; I thought she was a member of the faculty…that was going to retire soon.

'Going back to high school' movies are a close cousin of the body-switching movies. High school movies, of any kind are never about people in high school. There a product of a youth obsessed culture. Involving the high school world of geeks and jocks; that only exists in movies. If they aren't cops, then they're magazine writers for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Comedies are only meant to 90 minutes long. About 10 or 15 minutes worth of content should have been cut. I do like the surprise ending, like Steven Seagal in The Onion Movie (2008) as the 'crotch puncher'.

Final Verdict: 85 out of 100