Ride Along Review

This past week I spent some time catching up on some movies that I had missed earlier in the year in theaters that are now on DVD. One such movie was Ride Along. Back in January, Ride Along became a huge surprise hit. Not only did it break the January opening weekend record, but it ruled a top the box office for an impressive three weeks before The LEGO Movie finally dethroned it. Despite this, I really didn't have a huge desire to see this one in theaters. It just didn't look that good. Now yes, I see movies all the time that I think are going to be bad just so I can get my review out, but this was one I decided to wait on since I had better things to do at the time. It finally came out on Redbox and I decided I would give it a shot in hopes that Kevin Hart would at least make me laugh enough to call it an enjoyable experience. Nope. This movie was just plain out bad and I am glad I didn't spend my money to see it in theaters.

Simply put, Ride Along is a buddy cop movie. And one that doesn't really make a ton of sense. Kevin Hart is in love with Ice Cube's sister and they want to get married. But in order to do so, he must get Ice Cube's blessing. I'm not sure why it's the brother's blessing he needs and not the father's, but whatever. The conflict here is Ice Cube hates Kevin Hart, so Kevin Hart needs to prove himself. The agreement is that Kevin Hart will join Ice Cube in a police patrol for 24 hours. Ice Cube is a top police officer and Kevin Hart is only a security guard. Yes, these two actors have actual names in the movie, but who cares.

The main issue here comes from Ice Cube. The man can't act to save his life. In every single thing he does he has the same angry, wooden acting style. In fact, every single time I've heard the man speak, movie or not movie, it's the same way. I don't think the man even knows how to talk in a happy or vary his tone of voice at all. He also looks angry at all times. I don't think I've seen him smile or look happy. That face and that voice is pretty much stuck on him at all times. I don't know why anyone would ever cast him in a movie because he can't be anything besides that. He can't be anything else except for Ice Cube. On a side note, I don't know why he calls himself Ice Cube. That's a dumb name. But I suppose it fits because he can't act any better than an actual ice cube. However, going into this movie, I knew Ice Cube was in it and I didn't expect anything but dumb and stupid from him. I did hope that Kevin Hart would would make me laugh, because that man is actually pretty funny. But he was the big disappointment in this because in my opinion he was super, super annoying. He made me chuckle a few times, but for the most part he was like an annoying fly that keeps buzzing around your head that won't go away.

When I go into a comedy, I think it's obvious that the most important part of the movie needs to be the humor. If the comedy makes me laugh, than the movie has succeeded. This movie didn't make me laugh. Yes, the story was dumb, but if the movie had humor, that could've been forgiven. It didn't. Instead one lead was boring and wooden while the other lead was super annoying. If you haven't seen Ride Along because you were like me and it just didn't seem to interest you, than let me do you a favor and tell you that it's not worth your time. Pick a different Redbox for your evening. I give Ride Along a 5/10.