Ride Along – Movie Review

I haven’t seen to many of Ice Cube’s movie recently, but this is one I wanted to check out because of the team up with Kevin Hart. I have to say, my first impression of Kevin Hart wasn’t the greatest. He seems like an over-actor and takes his roles to an extreme level. You know what I mean? Kevin do you know what I mean? I gave it a shot anyways and was pleasantly surprised of the outcome. The movie takes us on a day where Ben Barber (Kevin hart) goes on a “Ride Along” with James Peyton (Ice Cube) to show that he is worthy of marrying Angela Payton played by Tika Sumpter who is James’ sister. Now James already doesn’t like Ben for many reason (imagine that), but he really doesn’t like the idea that Ben wants to marry his sister and that is where the “Ride Along” comes in. He thinks he can scare off Ben by torturing him throughout the ride along. James asks for all the lame and hard assignments to just make the day terrible and hopefully discourage Ben from going through with the wedding.

What I ended up liking about the movie is the dynamic between Ben and James and even as hard as James tries to get Ben to give up, it doesn’t happen and we are in for some great comedy. When you have two leads in a comedy, it needs to work, not just in the laughs from the individual actors, but you need to believe in the relationship between the two actors. Even in when you have one that hates the other, I still have to believe that they fit together as a comedy pair. Maybe it’s Ice Cube that balances out Kevin’s over-acting that made this movie work for me, honestly you need that balance for this to work. Would the Director call for that much from Kevin Hart? or is that his style of acting, I don’t know, but like I said it worked here for me and I laughed in several places throughout.

There are some spots in the movie that are going to be predictable which isn’t a bad thing, maybe you are the type that hates knowing before hand what will happen, but in this movie it helps move the movie along and helps the comedy. Give this movie a try if you are looking for a good comedy, I don’t know if it is at the Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson team up type comedy or even Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg, but you will have fun and it won’t be a bad night for movie watching when nothing else is on.