FILM REVIEW: "Ride Along 2" not worth the ride

Ride Along is pretty stupid, but it is funny stupid. It is light hearted, it goes down easy and it is full of wit. It is the perfect guilty pleasure. The kind of movie that you watch while continuously asking yourself “why am I even watching this?”, but too caught up in fits of laughter the whole time to even get up and walk away. So it was only natural that I was excited at the chance to see Ride Along 2. Guess what? I did not laugh. Not once. Which is unusual because one glance at Kevin Hart usually has one laughing so hard already, before he even utters a word. Well, Ride Along 2 will definitely suck all that humor right out of you. 

The sequel picks up sometime after the first movie. Not that much time has passed though because Ben (Kevin Hart) and Angela (Tika Sumpter) who got engaged at the end of Ride Along are still to get married. Ben is now a rookie police officer and James (Ice Cube) is still a scowling detective who loves to hate his future brother-in-law. We follow the two as they are assigned on a case in Miami where they are tailing a hacker (Ken Jeong) in a bid to track down a drug dealer. The location itself really let's us soak up the “Magic City experience” through shots of bikini-clad bodies, a foot chase in the back alleys of Little Havana and some dancing at a night club. However, the tired story line will have you knocked of to slumber in minutes. 

The exhausted cop buddy angle comes to play but even so, Ben and James fail to bring out the right chemistry to make it work. It is so typical of the filmmakers to rely on fast talking and slow thinking as a comic element for Hart’s character. Cube on the other hand just does the bare minimum to keep the generic story going. The entire movie feels over explained and it seems as though the writers had tried too hard to make it all funny, failing dismaly. A cameo by Tyrese Gibson atempts to mock the Fast and Furious franchise, Ben finds himself trapped in a backyard with a jumbo aligator and he draws inspiration from his video-game addiction to maneuver his way through a car chase. I must credit the editor, Peter S. Eliot though for his skils in simultaneously cuting briskly through live action and some action packed car racing video game; the only time the movie springs to life. The rest if the plot just chokes and sputters along with desperation to piece together. Even with a solid cast ensamble of incredible actors, Ride Along 2 is nothing short of a big fat joke without the funny. I wouldn't recommend it unless you really wanted to see how bad it is