James doesn’t like Ben (Kevin Hart), who lives with James’ dishy sister. James (Ice Cube) is a real cop and a bit of a rogue one at that. Ben’s only notion of police work comes from his advanced knowledge of video games yet he’s somehow just been accepted into Atlanta’s police academy. In the first of many happy yet hackneyed scenes, we learn of Ben’s addiction to these games when his sizzling betrothed, Angela (Tika Sumpter) has to beg for his attention. Many cliched scenes soon follow as James takes Ben on a ride-along to kill two birds with one stone by discouraging him from a criminal justice career while keeping at bay the prospect of a wimpy brother-in-law.
Saving the film from disaster is pretty decent chemistry between stoic James and self-conscious Ben. It reminds one of The Heat, another film where odd-couple interaction between the leads trumped less than stellar material. Hart is no Melissa McCarthy but he’s sporadically hilarious and steadily watchable. (Bracing oneself for the doldrums of January/February movie releases, half the battle is to grade them on a “winter curve” of sorts. The alternative–to hibernate in front of TCM until the spring and ignore the whole batch–admittedly isn’t very sporting.)
Hart keeps throwing the viewer a life jacket when he repeatedly attempts to go all macho and comes up humiliated and scared. Like Curley in The Three Stooges or the immortal Stan Laurel, he’s the little guy trying to act brave in nasty situations. His first episode of whistling past the graveyard involves him trying to disperse a nasty looking group of bikers. When he mistakes a bearded female biker for a guy, two notions immediately take hold: Hart is a funny physical actor. And we’re in for a long movie.
By the time Laurence Fishburne rolls in we’ve had a few more simpering scenes. One involves a crazy man in a supermarket who keeps smashing things to the ground while disrobing and eventually rubbing honey all over his body. Ice Cube all but rolls his eyes as Hart gets tangled up with the honey and needs to get rescued himself. Then we’re suddenly thrown into a warehouse scene that felt so lengthy I began to wonder if it was a movie within a movie. Fishburn seems to suffer from the unnamed but totally familiar affliction of pointing guns at people but never pulling the trigger. John Leguizamo, who plays a Latin stereotype, also transforms into Hamlet whenever he’s got a gun to someone’s head.
Things come full circle when Angela re-enters the film as –what else?–a woman taken hostage. At gunpoint. Ride Along does its best take the viewer hostage as well but Hart puts his foot down. His silly ass saves. (If you insist on attending January films).
2.5 Buddy Films With Extra Comedy and Action On The Side (out of 5)