RIDE ALONG 2

Starring: Kevin Hart, Ice Cube, Tika Sumpter
Writers: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Director: Tim Story

After the box-office success of the first Ride Along movie, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart return for a second helping of mismatched buddy action. Ben (Hart) is now a rookie cop but he's still being a pain in the arse to hotshot detective James (Cube), not least because he's about to marry James' sister Angela (Sumpter) and he's pestering to assist on a drug case which will take them to Miami.

Did I say rookie cop? Just checked, yes I did. That makes him the perfect candidate to help crack a major drug ring in Miami. Still, this is Ride Along 2 and James thinks that if Ben fails to prove himself on a real investigation it will end his daydreams of being a supercop. James' boss doesn't seem to mind that a clearly unqualified officer is pursuing a lead on a drugs baron and Angela would like Ben out of the way for a few days to stop him clashing with the wedding planner, so hey, why not? Hey, I was free for a few days, how come I didn't get the call to join them in Florida?

Okay, this is hardly Heat in terms of the police procedural details so I'd generally be willing to cut this kind of action comedy some slack but the plot is just a series of convenient discoveries and Macguffins upon which to hang chases, shootouts and Cube-Hart comedy banter. This would be fine if the chases, shootouts and comedy banter were up to scratch but unfortunately they aren't.

This is not to say that Ride Along 2 is awful. It isn't. It's competently made, it's reasonably well acted and it has a couple of amusing sequences. The problem I had is that it's just so formulaic and goes through the motions in such a depressingly programmed way that I was checking my watch to the point where I thought it had stopped. The script is really at fault here, falling way short in terms of either laughs or thrills, falling back on some of the laziest stereotypes it's possible to cram into a comedy cop movie.

Take Olivia Munn as tough, feisty Florida 'tec Maya. We know she can handle herself because she incapacitates Ben on their first meeting. We know she's feisty because she can give as good as she gets in the snappy dialogue department. However, her character's main area of expertise seems to be that she has boobs. Which means she turns up to one location wearing a sports bra - Hey, look guys! Boobs! - and then uses said boobs, squeezed into a slinky dress, to distract drug lord Antonio Pope (a luckless Benjamin Bratt) whilst Ben is trying to steal files from Pope's computer. Maya is apparently an ace cop, crack shot and skilled driver but BOOBS. Got that? BOOBS.

Back to poor old Benjamin Bratt, saddled with a bad guy role so ineffectual that I was left thinking that there must be another, bigger, badder bad guy behind him. No, Antonio Pope is not only a stupefyingly dull businessman but he's also a stupefyingly dull villain to boot, possessing all the threat of a minor ailment and becoming the unwelcome recipient of the screenplay's very worst lines. Pope is the sort of guy Hans Gruber would send to pick up his laundry.

I say all of this with a certain amount of frustration because if these performers had actually been handed something with even a smidge of potential I'm sure the results would have been much more satisfying. It's obvious that Cube and Hart play really well off each other and it's testament to both of them that this remains just about watchable. If the material had matched their talents then I could have well been talking about something special. As it is, Ride Along 2 is a disappointing, join-the-dots enterprise which squanders the considerable skills of its participants.

Ride Along 2? Nah, it's okay, I'll walk.



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