Ride Along

In Irish comedy The Stag director John Butler takes a well-worn scenario – the dreaded stag party – and injects it with something vaguely new: a light, subtle dismantling of ritualised masculinity, and the absurd ideas and ideals that go along with it.

Hollywood needs to catch up, and fast. Instalment 49,635 of the buddy-cop genre sees Kevin Hart and Ice Cube (seriously? We still have to call him that? Can someone tell Mr.Cube that he’s 44 years old?) as potential brother-in-laws. Concerned the prospective new addition to the family isn’t sufficiently macho, Cube sets Hart a Man Challenge: accompany him on a police ride-along to catch some baddies. Because a real man is a man’s man. A gun-toting man. A criminal-catching man. A club-a-woman-on-the-back-of-the-head, drag-her-back-to-the-cave-and-allow-Ice-Cube-to-set-her-dowry man.

Embracing every tired cliché imaginable, the plot is both implausible and predictable. Note to director Tim Story: if you want to put a surprising double-cross in your story, you need to give us more than one supporting character, otherwise it becomes fairly obvious. The action is dull, the “comedy” groan-inducing, the film a bore.

The only saving grace is Hart, whose quick-fire, slightly manic, insecure schtick often has echoes of Paul Rudd. However, when Cube’s idea of acting is just repeatedly raising his eyebrow and uttering song lyrics like “Move bitch, get out tha’ way!" “Howdja like me now?” and (groan) “Today was a good day”, Hart’s over-compensation becomes exhausting.