Ride Along 2: Review

14 January 2016 Last Updated on 19 April 2016 Written by David Cantu 1 Comment

Rookie lawman Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) aspires to become a detective like James Payton (Ice Cube), his future brother-in-law. James reluctantly takes Ben to Miami to follow up on a lead that’s connected to a drug ring. The case brings them to a homicide detective and a computer hacker who reveals evidence that implicates a respected businessman. It’s now up to James and Ben to prove that charismatic executive Antonio Pope is actually a violent crime lord who rules southern Florida’s drug trade.

Sequels don’t normally have the best reputation of being superior to the original if they’re comedies then the chances are even less. Thankfully this isn’t the case with this film. Now, that’s not to say that this film isn’t repetitive and doesn’t revisit some of the same jokes but for the most part it pushes the action to another level. Cube and Hart have this big brother/little brother chemistry that is funny because of the utter annoyance of Cube’s character. Their banter back and forth is exactly the thing that I loved from buddy cop movies from the 80’s. Cube isn’t the best actor and there are times where his line delivery can sound like he doesn’t care at all but he does have the intimidating, hard edged character down pretty good. Hart is his typical loud and observational type of humor but his character was the one that was basically getting picked on by everyone else which made for some funny moments. Olivia Munn plays Detective Cruz of the Miami PD. Yes, Cruz. She’s supposed to Latina….I don’t buy it. She favors Asian (which is part of her nationality) more so than Latina. She did play a pretty good badass cop though and that’s one thing that I would think I would ever say. Then of course there’s Ken Jeong who usually plays characters that are fairly similar so I didn’t feel like it was anything new. I’m not saying he wasn’t funny because there were a few good moments of his that had me laughing. The best performance of the film belonged to Benjamin Bratt. I’m just going to come out and say it: He plays a REALLY good bad guy! He comes across suave, confident and ruthless which are all the things that make a good movie villain. I just wish there would’ve been more physicality coming from him which I feel like would’ve made him even more menacing and dangerous. I was pleasantly surprised with the film and it was actually a lot of fun to watch even though it did follow the same formula as the previous entry. It’s not the best but if you were entertained by movies like Rush Hour and The Heat then you’ll definitely like this one. 6/10