This buddy spy movie lacks in, well, intelligence
Central Intelligence
(out of 4) Starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Danielle Nicolet, Amy Ryan and Aaron Paul. Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Opens June 17 at GTA theatres. 107 minutes. PG
Just a hunch, but I’m betting the script for Central Intelligence was another of those plug-and-play amusements Hollywood resorts to all too often.
Someone decided it would be a good idea to put together Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, with the big guy as prankster and the little guy as serious dude. A generic spy story was dusted off and the lads were slotted in, adding scenes where Johnson is manly and Hart is frantic, as per usual. Whether or not it actually went down like that is beside the point, since this committee-written movie plays like factory issue.
Johnson and Hart actually do have potential as a comic duo — better than Ice Cube and Hart in the al- ready stale Ride Along franchise — but Central Intelligence isn’t smart enough to make the most of their pairing.
Too silly to be taken as sober espionage drama, yet too grim to properly tickle the funny bone, and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber ( We’re the Millers) with artificial exuberance, the film exists in the queasy middle ground of unfulfilled expectations.
The story, such as it is, begins in high school in 1996, where Johnson’s bullied and humiliated “Fat Robbie” and Hart’s athletic and adored Calvin (a.k.a. “The Golden Jet”) are evidently on vastly different life journeys.
Jump ahead 20 years: Robbie is now the man-mountain CIA agent “Bob Stone” out saving the world (or something like that), while Calvin is a frustrated accountant fearing an impending high school reunion. Calvin’s wife Maggie (Daniella Nicolet), a prom queen turned lawyer who is more successful than her hubby, seeks marriage counselling.
Contrivance will bring Robbie and Calvin together for predictably heroic hijinks, along with running jokes about whether Robbie is or isn’t really a good guy. (Amy Ryan and Aaron Paul join in the thankless task of attempting to make this potboiler a simmering mystery.)
The quirks are similarly calculated: Robbie loves unicorns, cinnamon pancakes and 16 Candles; Calvin can do back flips, except when he can’t.
All this, plus star cameos and curtain-call stunting. The only thing missing is comedy, and also drama. Somebody screwed up at the factory.