Ride Along

I suppose there is some "chemistry" between little Kevin Hart and larger Ice Cube in this utterly feeble, brain-wasting crime comedy. It is, however, the sort of chemistry that causes noxious green fumes to waft about the laboratory. Do not approach Ride Along without protective clothing. Actually, do not approach it at all.

The so-called named Tim Story looks to have grabbed his script from the "plot" section of the service station while racing to a meeting for which he had not properly prepared. Hart plays a videogame fanatic who desperately wants to be a police officer. Ice Cube, brother to Kevin's girlfriend, actually is an Atlanta cop, but the last person he wants to see in the doughnut room is Mr Hart.

Anyway, for some reason I’ve already forgotten, Ice Cube allows his potential in-law to ride along with him for an evening. Will they solve a major crime and end up accommodating their differences? Well, yes. But not for an extraordinarily long time.

In Ireland, Ice Cube is still probably the more famous of the two leads. But, having released a hit stand-up film last year, Hart is now a hot property in the US. As a result, he has been invited to improvise coils of gibberish around every scrap of dialogue. For the most part, this involves repeating randomly selected nouns in a high pitched voice while Mr Cube folds his arms and pulls a constipated face. The only reason this never feels old is that it never came close to feeling new.

To be fair, Hart and Cube do, indeed, bounce off one another with some energy and enthusiasm. With the right material, they could very well deliver a comedy worth laughing at. We do not, however, expect much from the sequel that is already under discussion.

That's right. Defying all reason, Ride Along was a massive smash in the US. Some folk really are too easily pleased.