Critic Reviews

As broad as a barn yet as thin as paper, The Watch is a summertime action-comedy that works almost in spite of its overcrowded cast and loose, pulpy spitball of a plot.

Some of the phallic jokes work, others are really lame. Fortunately there are many other funny bits that have nothing to do with body parts that keep the laughs coming.

If you can ignore the disturbing parallels with recent events, this middle-aged, Middle-American "Attack The Block" raises a laugh.

It's not that The Watch is terrible – it's not not terrible, but there are sufficient diversions and more punitive ways to spend your evening – but that it's one of those smoke bomb comedies that seems to disappear even while you're watching, leaving no trace of itself behind.

It's so determined to be crude, vulgar and offensive that after a while I grew weary. Abbott and Costello used to knock out funnier movies on this exact intellectual plane without using a single F, S, C, P or A word.

In spite of some prominently featured green slime and power-beam weaponry, it won't make anyone forget "Ghostbusters" anytime soon.

It sticks in the craw. The whole movie does.

If this movie wanders into your neighborhood, the only watch that will hold your attention is the timepiece on your wrist.

It should be funnier. It should be better. Instead, it just sort of is.

What's onscreen feels as half-assed and juvenile as it was probably always envisioned to be, suggesting an umpteenth retelling of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by way of "The Hangover," or perhaps a far less inspired version of "Attack the Block" transplanted to small-town Ohio.