Review: Central Intelligence (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring: Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson

Central Intelligence looks like it was a lot of fun to make. I'm not sure it's ever quite as much fun to watch, but I'm glad that some millionaires got to have a good time. Though the film is sometimes quite funny, it's also strangely inert given the high volume of action sequences spread throughout, and it inspired nothing more in me than indifference. Though indifference is probably better than massive disappointment, which is what I would have felt had I realized beforehand that its director, Rawson Marshall Thurber, is also the director of Dodgeball, a movie as silly as it is funny and had the benefit of Vince Vaughan at the height of his powers. Central Intelligence has the benefit of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart at the height of their powers, but somehow never makes as much of them as it could. Maybe next time will be better, and there certainly will be a next time given that Central Intelligence made a whole lot of money during the summer when just about nothing seemed to make quite enough money.

Review: Get Hard (2015)

* 1/2
Director: Etan Cohen
Starring: Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart

Premise: wealthy white man gets convicted of a white collar crime and turns to the only black person he knows, who he assumes has experience in prison based almost solely on his race, and hires him to train him so that he'll be able to survive in prison. There are very few ways in which this couldn't end up being racist. At first it seems like Get Hard might, might, have found that way by using the premise to critique white privilege and the cluelessness of the 1%, but fairly quickly it reveals itself to be toothless and uninterested in doing anything by picking the lowest hanging fruit. Granted, once in a while the lowest hanging fruit turns out to be funny, but Get Hard's reliance on it also condemns it to be an utterly forgettable piece of work.