Ride Along

A game of cops and robbers played by elementary school kids during recess has as much authenticity as Ride Along, when it comes to real police work.

That’s hardly the point, but even by the checkered standards of the buddy-cop comedy tradition, this low-brow effort is so ridiculously incoherent that it becomes distracting.

The film is meant to be a showcase for the pairing of Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, who are stranded within an odd-couple scenario that’s woefully uninspired and predictable.

James (Ice Cube) is an Atlanta detective who is obsessed with tracking down the city’s most notorious weapons smuggler, much to the dismay of his lieutenant (Bruce McGill). James spends his free time loathing Ben (Hart), a diminutive school security guard and video-game fanatic who happens to be dating James’ younger sister (Tika Sumpter).

When Ben gains entry into the city’s police academy, he sees it as an opportunity to impress James and earn his blessing for his relationship. James, however, is convinced that Ben will fail, and proposes to take him on a ride-along in order to prove it.

The resulting partnership doesn’t go as planned for either of them, mixing opportunities for Ben to humiliate himself with chances at redemption in the face of danger.

As directed by Tim Story (Fantastic Four), the whole movie follows a formulaic pattern, with Ice Cube as the straight man setting up Hart’s improvised comic lunacy. Although that repetition grows tedious pretty quickly, at least Hart’s abundant ad-libs and motor-mouthed mugging provide a few chuckles to break the monotony.

What remains in the script cobbled together by four hapless screenwriters is garbage, with punch lines and would-be twists typically telegraphed well in advance. The clumsy and convoluted final act, which allows Laurence Fishburne to establish a new nadir in his filmography, lacks both originality and dramatic integrity.

Ice Cube and Hart have each shown flashes of genuine talent in other projects, when they are given material that plays to their strengths. However, they’re not given a chance by the tired jokes in Ride Along, which feels more like a calculated demographic cash-in that winds up insulting to true-life cops and to the audience.

Rated PG-13, 100 minutes.