"Central Intelligence" | MOVIE REVIEW

I know what you're all asking, and I'mma set things straight: this is better than Cop Out.

Central Intelligence is a buddy-cop (sorta) movie starring Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson, but it's really more of a Kevin Hart movie than it is the Hart-and-Johnson movie the marketing campaign made it out to be. And, based on the marketing campaign, I expected this movie to do one of two things: entertain me or irritate me. To no one's surprise, it did both.

However, since I'm an optimist, I'll list what I liked about the movie first.

On top of everything, Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson have really good chemistry, and they looked like they had a lot of fun in the movie. And that's another thing I did like about this movie; there definitely was fun to be had. I laughed pretty hard at some of the jokes in the movie and the action was cool. And the movie packed some moments of heart, as well.

But where the movie falls flat is in its narrative.

The story was a mess and was moving so fast that I could hardly keep up with what was going on most of the time. On top of that, with the exception of Kevin Hart, all the characters in the movie were poorly developed or just really unlikeable, especially since you're supposed to be rooting for a lot of them.

And, since you don't like most of the characters in the movie, you sort-of feel as if the movie's kinda dragging you into its adventure against your will. Personally, I feel movies shouldn't be doing that; the movie should pull you into it, make you want to discover it. But Central Intelligence doesn't do that, and that was a bit of a bummer for me.

And the last act of the movie made literally no sense, but I feel like that's verging on spoiler territory, so I won't talk about that further.

Most of the other jokes in the movie either ended up becoming overused or just fell flat altogether, as well.

In the end, Central Intelligence was kinda funny, and there definitely was some fun to be had in the movie. However, the movie also suffered from a nonsensical plot and overly obnoxious characters, and those took a lot away from the experience. Overall, it was funny, but I wasn't too impressed in the end. As such, I'm giving this the unimpressed McKayla.

So, those are my thoughts on Central Intelligence. Have you seen it? Let me know what you think about it. As always, this has been Rafa. Stay classy.