Central Intelligence review: Hart and Johnson are far from dumb and dumber

I wouldn’t blame anybody who moved to Norway to avoid a boisterous spy thriller starring Kevin Hart and Dwayne “No Longer The Rock” Johnson. Don’t get me wrong. Both are amusing actors. Unfortunately, they rarely appear in amusing films. Contemporary US comedy rarely knows what to do with its brashest comic talents.

All hail Rawson Marshall Thurber. One of the less famous comic Thurbers, Rawson directed the modern classic Dodgeball: a True Underdog Story, the better-than-necessary Meet the Millers and, now, the surprisingly decent Central Intelligence.

The film begins as a variation on Carrie, with Johnson, fattened up to comic effect, in the Sissy Spacek role. It is 1996 and, as graduation approaches, Robbie finds himself friendless and spiritless. Just as the energetic Calvin (Hart) is about to be proclaimed most popular student, poor Robbie gets dragged naked from the showers and dumped in the gym. Only Calvin takes pity on him.

Twenty years later, Calvin is happily married to his high-school sweetheart (Nicolet) and less happily manacled to his job as an accountant. One day he receives a message to meet Robbie, who he hasn’t seen since that grim day, for a drink before the high-school reunion. We need say no more than his old chum is now Dwayne Johnson.

At this stage it feels as if there is no great need for Central Intelligence (demands of title noted) to turn into an espionage movie. The interplay between Hart and Johnson is beautiful. The former is so tightly wound one half-expects bits of his brain to ooze from his ears. Johnson is admirably open to a character that seems equal parts Robert Mitchum (he can win a bar fight just by blinking) and Pollyanna (he still dreams of being Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles).

When the film does eventually lurch into spy territory, it loses just a little of its charm. The who-cares plot is unnecessarily complicated. The action sequences are a little over-extended. But these are great characters that, box-office figures permitting, we’d happily see in a sequel.