Ride Along

In this day and age, I have learned to have a love/hate relationship when it comes to the genre of comedies. Comedy is my favorite genre, but once I plunk down the price of admission, am I going to get a funny movie, or just another piece of physical, fart joke, four letter word ridden flick type of fare? I went to see "Ride Along" with great trepidation, only to walk out the theater with a sizable smile on my face.

When a fast-talking security guard, Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) is challenged by soon to be brother-in-law James Payton (Ice Cube) to go on a 'ride along' through the streets of Atlanta to earn his respect so as to approve of Ben marrying his sister Angela (Tika Sumpter), sparks fly and tempers get thrown out the window as these two constantly butt heads.
As James gets tips of the whereabouts of an arms dealer, Omar (Laurence Fishburne) he's been tracking for some time, Ben now gets entangled in the case, and what starts as a joke to James becomes a more serious ride along for he and Ben. Now, in order to prove that Ben deserves his future bride, he must survive the most insane 24 hours of his life.

Others to round out the cast are John Leguizamo as Santiago, fellow cop of James', Bruce McGill as Lt. Brooks, Bryan Callan as Miggs, another fellow cop of James', Dragos Bucur as Marko, Gary Owen as Crazy Cody, Jacob Latimore as Ramon, Jay Pharoah as Runflat, Benjamin Lil P-Nut' Flores as Morris the Kid, Eric Benson as Marko's Gunman, Greg Rementer as Marko's Gunman, and Anna House as Cafeteria Lady.

This was adequately directed by Tim Story ("One of Us Tripped" '97, "The Firing Squad" '99, "Barbershop" '02, "Taxi" '04, "Fantastic Four" '05, " Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" '07, "Hurricane Season" '09, "Think Like a Man" '12). As one can realize by his resume, Story is extremely talented when it comes to ensemble casting. He has an innate ability to bring his cast together and creates a continuity between his actors that seems effortless. This was written by Greg Coolidge, Jason Mantzovkas, Phil Hay, and Matt Manfredi, based on a story by Coolidge. The constant banter between Cube and Hart was creatively written, and this just added to the great chemistry between these two actors. There was even a reference to the film, "Training Day" '01 in this since it had a comedic feel to that film.

When I originally saw the trailer on this, I thought it would be yet another worthless, non funny film that I would have to endure for a 100 minute running time, but this film was actually funny, certainly 90% was, and in this day where finding a truly funny film to sink your teeth in is tough to find, 90% is the same as 100% in my book.

Out of 4 Stars: 3                              Rated: PG-13                             100mins.