Review – Central Intelligence

For a movie called Central Intelligence, the movie is incredibly stupid.  I understand that its intention is suppose to be a fun, mind-less action comedy, but it fails on all fronts.  It isn’t fun, it isn’t funny, and the plot far too complex for its own good and incredibly predictable.

Kevin Hart stars as Calvin Joyner, a former high school hotshot who is now an unhappy accountant.  When former classmate, now C.I.A agent, Bob Stone (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) reaches out to Calvin for help, it throws him into a world of espionage chaos.

I love The Rock in almost anything he does.  Hell, I even liked him in the horrible Pain & Gain (2013).  But in Central Intelligence, he was just awful.  His sociopathic Bob Stone was just weird and not funny.  It’s a shame, because The Rock has been funny in movies like The Rundown (2003) and even has a few lines in the Fast & Furious series, but in those movies, he was never the focal point for the comedy.  I guess this proves The Rock isn’t perfect.  On the other side, I really liked Kevin Hart in this film.  I was getting a little annoyed with his schtick as of late, especially after this year’s Ride Along 2.  But playing the more straight-laced character, similar to that in last year’s Get Hard, really worked for him.  His jokes don’t get tired and his one-liners stick a lot better.  I never thought I would like Kevin Hart more than The Rock in a movie, but color me surprised, because that’s exactly what happened.  I will also say that their are some pretty good cameos in the film that will draw a few chuckles.

The movie itself is all over the place.  There was never once a moment in the film where I felt that Calvin and Bob were friends.  I never felt their bond and the whole movie felt like a kidnapping instead of a buddy film.  The central plot involving air codes or something just doesn’t work at all.  The movie also tries to bring in some emotion by touching on a traumatic experience in Bob’s life and they barely do anything with it.  The plot is also annoyingly predicable.  I was calling out all the twists and turns three scenes before they happened, especially the “twist” at the end, which I called almost a half hour into the movie.  The action in the movie isn’t even that great.  Sure, we get a couple of decent looking shoot-outs, but it just becomes noise towards the end.

Central Intelligence is one of the biggest disappointments of the summer.  When you bring the best action star in the game today with one of the best comedians, you would think you’re in for a treat.  But instead, we get a boring, stupid, predictable, near laugh-less action comedy that misses every mark.

MY RATING – 1.5/4

Did you see Central Intelligence?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @kevflix or on Facebook at Kevflix.