Stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, Rosemarie DeWitt, Will Forte and Doug Jones Directed by Akiva Schaffer This is a love it or hate it deal, very much depending on your personal tolerance for the antics of Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn or Jonah Hill. They pretty much play some variation of any other character they've done before, which is either tiresome or you might still find it funny. So, I'm setting that aside in favour for the movie as a whole. Plot-wise, it's fairly simple. A mysterious death leads a concerned individual to create a neighbourhood watch in order to catch this murderer. Despite being extremely active within his own community, he barely manages to muster enough interest in his new project and ends up with a bunch of individuals who have different intentions for joint the watch. What they find instead is an alien and a rather nasty looking one at that - which is actually rather cool since he's played by one Doug Jones. Jones is a very physical actor and often Guillermo DelToro's go to guy for playing creatures be it in Hellboy, Hellboy: The Golden Army or Pan's Labyrinth. But going on plot alone and there's really nothing else much to it as the movie really does rely on the talents of the stars and their antics. As mentioned, Stiller, Vaughn and Hill are pretty much the same as they've been, so the wild-card of the pack is British actor/writer/director, Richard Ayoade. Ayoade doesn't really does much in the first half, keeping things on a very low key with the occasional quip and joining in on the frat-boy antics (so that's what you do with an alien body). The design of the alien itself is rather cool with some greet make-up for physical effects, amplified with CG effects. Jones does a fantastic job for the most part (we'll forget that one crazy bit in the man-cave) giving the alien a slightly out of this world physicality. The movie is incredibly rude and crude with lots of off-colour jokes of the frat-boy/man-child mentality. Some hit the mark and do elicit laughs, as do some of the antics, but most fall flat - again depending on your personal taste and tolerance for this kind of comedy. There were a few jokes that tickle my funny bone, and I did laugh at some stuff. It's not really something I want to watch again, not that I would mind if it popped up on cable. Just have to switch off my moral compass rather than my whole brain, and maybe I'll still enjoy it. The movie knows how to have fun at times, but it feels like it works hard to find it. If you've enjoyed most of Vaughn's movies, you might enjoy this one. I think a decent yardstick would be Dodgeball (also with Vaughn and Stiller). If you enjoyed that, you might enjoy this. Otherwise, you might want to steer clear.
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