Ride Along 2

It's obvious that Ride Along 2 is not so much a sequel, as it is a filmed deal.  It exists simply because the first movie made over $130 million at the box office.  It doesn't advance the characters, or place them in any new or interesting situations.  It does nothing different, and it can't even be bothered to come up with ideas that aren't stolen from another movie.  In other words, this movie is creatively bankrupt from top to bottom.

Here again are Ice Cube and Kevin Hart as the police duo of James Payton and Ben Barber, respectively.  It's been two years since the last movie, and nothing has changed with them.  James is still overly serious, protective of his sister (whom Ben is planning to marry), and seems to have a permanent scowl on his face.  Ben, meanwhile, is still frantic, manic, and generally talks and acts like a hyperactive Smurf on helium.  This time, they're assigned a mission in Miami to take down a drug dealer (Benjamin Bratt) who is so transparently evil, the screenwriters may as well have just gone all the way and named the character "Ima Villain".  The boys are joined by two new characters in their latest adventure, neither of whom add much.  We have a hacker named A.J. (Ken Jeong), who used to work for the drug dealer, but now fears for his life after stealing money from his former employer, and turns to our heroes to keep him alive.  There is also a sexy female homicide detective named Maya (Olivia Munn), whose entire personality is driven by her wardrobe.  Not many homicide detectives would show up at a crime scene wearing their gym clothes, but this one does.  Each scene she appears in seems to be based around her wearing some kind of revealing outfit.

Ride Along 2 is one of those movies that plays out like the script was created by feeding a dozen or so action buddy cop comedy scripts into a wood chipper, and then pasting the bits and pieces together.  There's not a single solitary moment, line of dialogue or action that these characters perform that doesn't feel telegraphed or borrowed.  Maybe director Tim Story (who directed the last film) thought that his two stars could liven up the material, but Ice Cube and Kevin Hart just don't seem to have that much chemistry up there on the screen.  Hart acts as frantic as possible, hoping that if he says his lines in a funny voice or flails his arms as he does so, he'll get laughs.  Cube simply seems to be cashing a paycheck here.  He can be a very good straight man in a comedy, but he's just not trying here.

I'm going back over the movie in my mind in a desperate attempt to think of something to talk about in this review.  Nothing is coming to me.  There's certainly nothing to be said about any of the action sequences, which are nothing special.  Wait, there is one bizarre one where our heroes are involved in a high speed chase down the streets of Miami, and Hart's character (who is a huge fan of video games) starts seeing the world as a CG game for some reason.  It's not that the scene is particularly well done or funny, it's just simply...odd.  Maybe if the script were smarter, it could serve as a commentary on how so many recent action movies use so much CG to the point that they're starting to look like the video games you find on your Playstation 4.  Alas, I don't think this was the intention.  It was simply a failed attempt by the screenwriters to make a routine car chase different.

This is a beyond lazy sequel that is designed to get one big weekend, where the fans of the first movie will shell out their money, be disappointed, and abandon it for another movie the following weekend.  I know that this is a somewhat shorter review than usual for me, but that's only because most movies at least give me something to talk or think about.  All Ride Along 2 does is make me ponder its very existence, outside of fattening the wallets of a few Hollywood executives.

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