The Watch (2012)

  My God, what an awful film.  This is the kind of stupid frat-boy shit that I hate seeing perpetuated.  And in the last decade, no less!  Have we learned nothing?!

Evan (Ben Stiller) is a boring, suburban Costco manager wildly compensating for his lack of discernable personality by being relentlessly cheerful.  When an employee (Joe Nunez) is violently murdered, Evan decides to start a Neighborhood Watch because he doesn't trust the local idiotic cops (Will Forte and Mel Rodriguez) to do their jobs properly.  Unfortunately, the only people who want to join are an unhinged reject from the police academy (Jonah Hill), an overenthusiastic bro who is also weirdly obsessed with his teenaged daughter (Vince Vaughn), and a nebbish weirdo with an Asian fetish (Richard Ayoade).  Evan is actually excited about the last one because it means he'll finally get to check the "black friend" box off his Suburban Liberal Racist scorecard.  The four bumblefucks generally just use the "Neighborhood Watch" as an excuse to drink and bitch about their lives until they stumble across signs of an actual extraterrestrial invasion happening in their town and decide to handle it themselves.

I sat through this entire thing, hoping against hope that it would somehow turn itself around by the end but it remained painfully unfunny, crass, and dangerously misguided.  Let's break down why.

The casual racism which is laughed off as some sort of characterization of Evan as "that guy, you know, that doesn't think he's racist but really wants a non-white friend, ha ha, you know the type" which completely normalizes the fetishization of other races.

The latent homophobia around Billy Crudup's creepily invasive neighbor.

The misogyny of Vaughn's disturbing obsession with his teenage daughter's love life, including stalking her Facebook, following her to parties, and being physically aggressive with her purported love interest (Nicholas Braun) in the name of "protecting" her, despite her repeated assertions that he is invading her privacy.  Not to mention the total sidelining of Evan's wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) who is only characterized by her frequent absences, nagging, and desperate desire to have a baby.

The phallocentric nature of the aliens' Achilles Heel.  Because the only way to kill them is to shoot them in the dick.  Because that's where their brains are.  Because, I'm assuming, the screenwriters (all men, what a shock) based them on their own experiences as dickheads. 

This movie could have been funny.  It could have been an exploration of how men bond over family and shared interests without the choking weight of toxic masculinity.  Instead, it's dick jokes and exploding cows.  Fuck this movie.