Review of Central Intelligence (2016) by Ben L — 18 Sep 2016

I laughed every time the preview for Central Intelligence came on TV, so I was seriously excited to see it in the theater. Luckily, unlike many modern comedies, all the best stuff was not spoiled in the trailers. I found this film absolutely hilarious, and a large part of that was because of the overwhelming charm of Dwayne Johnson. Kevin Hart has his moments, but he actually plays the straight man most of the time while Johnson is transformed into one of the funniest characters I've seen in a long time. He fully commits to this role, and therefore just about every line that comes out of his mouth made me laugh. It was a personality that seemed completely counter-intuitive given his appearance and profession in the film, to the point that my wife and I thought his character was putting on an act. But you learn over time that this is his genuine quirky personality. Despite all this oddity, I began the film caring about him (and Kevin Hart) because of a brilliant setup scene. In what might be one of the most blatant "save the cat" moments in modern cinema, we see Hart's character as extraordinarily kind, and we see Johnson's character as extraordinarily pitiable. Perhaps my added interest in this film came from the fact that I dealt with bullies myself, so I genuinely sympathized with this opening scene and therefore cared greatly about their characters and what would happen to them.

A large part of the action plot in this film was very reminiscent of the Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz film called Knight & Day. It's not a deal-breaker for me, because I kind of love that film, but the plot is a little predictable when you take that into consideration. There were also a few scenes where it felt like they were stuck in a loop and events were repeating themselves without moving forward. If Hart was questioned one more time by the CIA, I was going to get mad. They should have kept Kevin Hart with Dwayne Johnson almost non-stop in order to make the movie successful, but because of Hart's frightened character he kept running away (and subsequently being picked up by the CIA) which was a mistake and got old quick. I thought the banter between Hart and Johnson was so good, though, that as soon as they caught back up with one another the movie took off again and I forgot about my minor annoyance. Perhaps the most problematic decision they made, in my opinion, was the casting of some of the supporting roles. In particular there's one moment that was supposed to be a big twist/surprise, but it failed because of a decision they made in casting (I will reveal no more, because I'm treading dangerously close to spoilers.).

Despite this one casting flub, I thought they had a superb supporting cast (including one surprise appearance that genuinely shocked me.) Jason Bateman wasn't in the film much, but his one big scene was absolutely brilliant. Danielle Nicolet was charming and sweet, and felt like a legitimate grounding influence for Kevin Hart who needed to be the normal guy for most of the film. I thought the two of them had decent chemistry and so they successfully came across as a legitimate married couple. Lastly, Amy Ryan was ambiguous enough that we were allowed to question her loyalty from the very beginning to the very end. As a comedy and a buddy film I thought Central Intelligence was a huge success, and I've recommended it to many others on its merits. However, when you get past the comedy there are certainly a few flaws in the story structure. I think the bottom line for Central Intelligence is this: If you're going to care too much about the twists and turns of the plot and how the logic holds together, then Central Intelligence could definitely be a failure for you. However, if you're just looking for a comedy to give you some hearty laughs, then I think it will be a success as it was for me.