This movie opened a mere three weeks ago, but has more or less vanished since. I’ll keep the review short, and put about as much time into it as all involved put into making this movie.
What Works: To say this movie has no laughs would be wrong. It has four…spaced out over nearly 100 minutes.
What Doesn’t Work: Could a movie about a group of over zealous neighborhood watchmen (Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn…another guy you’ve never heard of) been good? Maybe. Could that same movie have been good if they were fighting aliens? Maybe less so. Could that same movie have been good if Ben Stiller played his Nigh at the Museum character asleep and Vince Vaughn re-played his Wedding Crashers blowhard as a suburban dad? Uhhh…This movie’s primary problem is that nothing in it feels new. Not the usual turns from Stiller and Vaughn, not Jonah Hill doing a less-successful take on his 21 Jump Street character, not poking fun at neutered men forced to play macho (which is seemingly the plot of every R-rated comedy in the last decade), and especially not the aliens, who may not rule Earth but definitely rule Hollywood villainy.
What I Would Have Done Differently: It feels more than a little weird to go from dick jokes to blasting aliens to blasting aliens in their dicks as the way to kill them (I’m not kidding). This movie wants to be sci-fi, action, buddy comedy, and gross out comedy all at once, and it would have been much wiser to stick one genre than fail at five of them. Let’s just say they had subtracted the aliens and subbed in a more Earthbound crew of thugs, instantly you’re getting a Beverly Hills Cop-riff that makes more sense than an R-rated Ghostbusters.