Ride Along - review

Given this basic story outline of "Kevin Hart plays a high school security guard (and hardcore gamer) who dreams of joining the police academy and gets taken on a Ride Along by his girlfriend's cop brother Ice Cube in order to prove he is worthy of her", I believe that even the most casual of moviegoers would be able to provide a detailed plot breakdown of the film as it is one of the most generic, cliched genre mismatched buddy cop movies ever conceived.

For example:

After figuring out he has been given all the stupid cases in order to discourage him, will Hart go into a real hostage situation acting all tough because he believes it to be fake? You betcha.

Will it be a surprise when certain other cops turn out to be working for the bad guy? No.

Would it shock you to find out that Hart is able to use his experience of playing military video games in a real gunfight? Of course not.

Ice Cube is working on a case searching for a crime lord that nobody knows what they look like except for a photo of a young Laurence Fishburne. So given that his name is in the credits, is there good chance that he will turn up at some point? Yes.

With numerous references to it throughout the film, Ride Along wishes it was in the same league as Training Day but instead the training wheels come off this film fast and it falls as short as its diminutive lead actor in just about every department.

1 star