Ride Along: Movie Review

Today I want to talk about the movie Ride Along. This movie won zero awards and in fact you're probably not going to remember it a year from now. But it has a few laughs, a surprise or two and at least one hardworking actor. It only has a small job to do, to divert. And it does it.

Now the actor Ice Cube plays an in-your-face Atlanta cop and Hart is an excitable wannabe who wants a shot at the Police Academy – and also the man's blessing to marry his kid sister (Tika Sumpter). But how's he going to do that? He thinks he can impress this guy with a ride along.

This movie really reminded me a lot the Rush Hour in a couple ways. Hart yammers away so constantly, so screechingly that you wonder if he has to cut royalty checks to Chris Tucker. Hart can be genuinely funny, though – he is one of those comics who will do anything for a laugh, and some things twice – and he is tireless. Nearly boneless, too, from the shots of him (or his stunt double) getting bounced off walls like a rubber ball.

What he doesn't get to do here is play much of a consistent character – he's trash-talking brave or jelly-spined scared, as the jokes require. Nor is Ice Cube called upon to do much more than glower. But director Tim Story – who directed Ice Cube in "Barbershop," and Hart in "Think Like a Man" – knows his actors' strengths and weaknesses, and mostly plays to the first while trying to hide the second.

The plot, which has the cops looking for a mysterious crime figure known only as "Omar", is pretty good enough, too. And although Story is bad at staging firefights (there are two extended gun battles where it's hard to tell exactly who's shooting whom) he's pretty good with fistfights and car chases. And yes, there are plenty of both.

So what did I think of Ride Along? In all honesty it was pretty much exactly as I expected considering it had Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. It wasn't at the top of the line comedies, but the subtle little fits of Kevin Hart and the crude yet hilarious remarks and violence from Ice Cube was exactly what I was looking for when watching this film.