It’s one of the oldest action comedy tricks in the book.
Pair a tall, muscle-bound action star with a shorter, smaller comedy star.
After all, what’s a clearer signal of comedy than putting two people who
represent obvious contrasts in the same frame? Once the visual gag is
established, the filmmakers only have to let their stars’ combined strengths
power the genres’ demands while their likability carries the rest. In the case
of Central Intelligence, the leads
are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – bringing amped up physicality and easy charm to
action and adventure all over the place, from big splashy studio fare like the Fast & Furious movies and Hercules
to scrappier low-budget eccentricities like Faster
or, better yet, Southland Tales – and
Kevin Hart – one of the most popular stand-ups working today, and a motor-mouth
comedy lead in a constant churn of mostly forgettable fare like Think Like a Man and The Wedding Ringer, with a few pleasant
surprises like About Last Night. Who
knew that putting them together would bring out the best in both?
Johnson and Hart each started their film careers as
scene-stealers, filling bit parts with their own unique brands of charisma, and
are consequently best when their bigger roles don’t sand down their individuality.
The inspiration of Central Intelligence comes
in allowing them each to play to and against type in enjoyable silliness given
just enough weight to justify a few explosions. Johnson plays a big, bulky man
who is effortlessly intimidating and capable, but with a sly sweetness bubbling
through. We learn through an opening flashback (slathered in half-convincing CG
de-aging and enlarging) he was a fat kid picked on in high school who now,
twenty years later, is a ripped secret agent still carrying pain of that long ago
bullying. Hart plays a former classmate, an admired hotshot football player who
was the only one not laughing at Johnson’s teenaged humiliation. Now he’s the
one feeling dumped on, overlooked at work in what is a boring accounting firm
anyway. He wishes his life had more excitement. He’s about to regret that.
Johnson, delightfully dorky with a fanny pack and a
wide-eyed eagerness to make a good impression, arrives in town for the class
reunion and looks up the one person who was remotely nice to him at the time. Hart,
sad and low-energy, agrees to meet him for drinks, and is delighted to have a
blast: reminiscing, doing shots, beating up bullies, and riding a motorcycle.
Hart has a new friend, but it turns out Johnson’s with the C.I.A., on the run
for one reason or another, chased by his colleagues and villains alike, and he
needs an accountant he cant trust. This brings out the personalities we’d
expect from these men: Johnson turning into the strong man of action and Hart
jumping into excited nervous patter. The cleverness comes in intermingling
these new modes of behavior with the old. Johnson is an action hero and a shy kid wanting to impress the
cool guy, while Hart is a fish out of water relying on some of his old
ingratiating high school charm to talk his way out of this jam with no hard
feelings.
The plot is the usual bunch of hooey hauled out for an
action comedy. There’s a USB drive full of shady bank numbers, a mysterious
no-good bad guy mastermind with a code name (The Black Badger), government
agents hot on the trail, a handful of menacing black market professionals, and
a red ticking clock counting down to the climax. It’s an excuse to invite in
actors of the sort it’s always a pleasure to see, with small but enjoyable
roles for Amy Ryan, Aaron Paul, Ryan Hansen, Kumail Nanjiani, and a few choice
Big Names who are smartly revealed for big impacts. There’s nothing too
terribly surprising about any developments herein (especially if you’re
familiar with Ebert’s Law of Conservation of Star Power). The story is strictly
pro forma, a sturdy staging area for its lead duo’s combustible combined
charisma. They’re terrific fun bouncing off each other, alternately
antagonizing and cooperating as they get deeper into a scenario that involves charming
banter, slapstick fight sequences, and grave consequences narrowly avoided.
Director Rawson Marshall Thurber (We’re the Millers) is wise to keep the focus tightly on the hugely
entertaining interactions between his stars. They make a good team, pushing
each other, Johnson proving once more his facility with humor, here the best
he’s ever been on the charm offensive, and Hart showing surprising dexterity
with the physical requirements of an action effort, especially one that needs
him to squirm and shout protests as he flails into accidental assists. One
particularly funny scene has him apologizing to two C.I.A. agents by saying
he’s as surprised as they were to find you could accidentally pistol whip
someone. It helps that screenwriters Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen (The Mindy Project) leave plenty of room
for amusing personality while still keeping the thriller mechanics moving along
tight enough to have little use for the drifting improv sag that infects so
many studio comedies these days. (There’s hardly any mean-spiritedness either,
a nice change of pace.) It’s brisk, efficient, and has a real contagious charge
between its mismatched leads, making for a breezy enjoyable good time.
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