The potent star power that leads “Central Intelligence” hardly needs to be explained or introduced: Dwayne Johnson is currently one of the biggest movie stars in the world, while Kevin Hart has been described as stand-up’s first mogul. They are both blessed with magnetic personalities, endless wells of natural charisma, and an innate understanding of their comic timing; put them in a movie together, and all you need to do is simply get out of their way. But it’s that one crucial thing that “Central Intelligence” fails to do, frequently fizzling the easy chemistry Johnson and Hart bring to the picture any time they start gaining real comedic momentum.
The overly involved story kicks off in flashback where through the magic of CGI, we meet the Robbie Weirdicht (GET IT?), a chubby high school senior with great dance moves and zero friends, who is a magnet for bullies. One particularly cruel prank leaves him completely naked on the gymnasium floor just as Calvin Joyner aka The Golden Jet is being honored by the entire school for being voted Most Likely To Succeed. As the rest of student body and teachers laugh heartily at Robbie, only Calvin shows him some compassion, offering him his jacket so he can cover up. Fast forward two decades and Robbie (Johnson) is now ripped, confident, and going by the name Bob Stone, and out of the blue he contacts Calvin (Hart) through Facebook on the eve of their high school reunion. What seems like a casual get together is soon revealed to have ulterior motives: Bob works for the CIA, and he needs mild-mannered Calvin’s forensic accounting skills to help figure out the details of an arms deal that’s going to go down in 14 hours. Meanwhile, Bob is being hunted by the agency itself, who believe he’s murdered his partner and gone rogue.
It’s a plot that belongs in the next installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, not a comedy that should be making as much room as possible for Johnson and Hart to let loose. Indeed, any time the duo build up a significant amount of energy, the messy mechanics of the story come barreling in, shifting the narrative attention to the tedious developments involving encryption keys, which is nothing more than a Macguffin to begin with. And it’s a shame because the rote action material comes at the expense of the much more surreal, and inspired bits of comedy that never get a chance to fully develop.
Sporting a fanny-pack and jorts, and loving unicorns (“the most lethal animal”), “Road House,” and “Sixteen Candles” in equal measure, Johnson’s delightfully dorky Bob may have bulked up since high school, but he’s still endearingly sweet, even if to a fault. It’s during his first meeting with Calvin that these characteristics really get a chance to shine, and draw the most laughs, and though Johnson eventually goes into The Rock Mode during the action scenes, it’s when he leans toward the goofy that he’s at his most charming and hilarious. Meanwhile, though he’s ostensibly playing the straight man, Hart still brings his specific brand of outrage to each increasingly exasperating situation Calvin finds himself in, and he rolls together so naturally with Johnson, you wish the rest of the movie would just disappear, and it was just the two of them hanging out.
After “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” and “We’re The Millers” (which also suffered from an unnecessarily convoluted plot), it’s becoming increasingly clear that director Rawson Marshall Thurber is all shoot and cut, and no craft. Johnson and Hart, who already struggle to shine in a movie that continually undermines their gifts, aren’t helped by Thurber who understands a punchline, but not necessarily the steps needed to get there. He’s been shooting each comedy the same way since ‘Dodgeball,’ as if every actor delivering the one liners was Vince Vaughn, instead of adjusting the editing and timing to the needs of his stars or the scene. And when it comes time for bullets to fly, Thurber’s camera is uninvolved, and his staging rudimentary when not just plainly confused, as it fails to establish any kind of architecture or cohesion to what’s happening on screen.
It’s telling that “Central Intelligence” is at its most entertaining at the beginning and end of the picture, when the story hasn’t yet unfolded, or has pretty much wrapped up. It’s at those moments we see the kernel of what could have been, a buddy movie that felt confident enough to be carried on the shoulders of its lead performers. Instead, what comes between those sections is a lot of overcompensation, and even a treacly anti-bullying message, that doesn’t give Johnson and Hart the benefit of the doubt. It’s the kind of movie where dumb fun would be totally acceptable, but in an ironic twist, the fact that it’s overthought is its ultimate undoing. [C-]