Ride Along 2

A very slight improvement over the unwatchable first film, Ride Along 2 follows Ice Cube’s James Payton as he’s once again forced to partner up with Kevin Hart’s Ben Barber on a dangerous case – with the target of the mismatched partners’ attention this time around a vicious drug dealer named Antonio Pope (Benjamin Bratt). It’s clear that Ride Along 2 benefits substantially from Hart’s decision to tone down his over-the-top schtick, as the actor makes an ongoing attempt to deliver an actual performance rather than just mug and scream his way through the proceedings (though he predictably can’t, from time to time, resist the urge to play for the cheap seats). The movie’s massive downfall is due instead to Tim Story’s lackluster direction and Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi’s almost aggressively hackneyed screenplay, with, in terms of the latter, the narrative suffused with a preponderance of bland and thoroughly generic elements that ultimately wreak havoc on the film’s tenuous momentum (ie the final stretch just seems to go on forever). Story’s continuing efforts to cultivate a buddy-comedy, Lethal Weapon-like vibe, as a result, fall completely and totally flat, and it is, in the end, difficult to find much here worth wholeheartedly embracing (ie who, aside from undemanding teens, is the intended audience for these films?)

*1/2 out of ****