Mutt-and-Jeff comedic teams have been a part of cinema history since Laurel and Hardy, and that dynamic of two completely dissimilar people annoying each other is at the heart of Tim Story's buddy comedy Ride Along. Sadly, the script, which is credited to four different people, never gives his game actors anything all that funny to do.
Kevin Hart stars as Ben, a school security guard madly in love with his beautiful girlfriend Angela (Tika Sumpter). The biggest obstacle to their relationship is Angela's very protective brother James (Ice Cube), a lone-wolf cop who hates that she's dating a loser. However, when Ben gets accepted to the police academy, James pretends to give the young man a chance by taking him on a ride along. While the big brother plans on making Ben's day a living hell by responding to annoying calls, the prospective cadet stumbles onto clues that lead to the master criminal James has been investigating for years.
Hart has one gear as a comedian, and it's faster than any sports car you can dream of. He plays motormouths who act full of themselves in order to compensate for their short stature. That can wear thin quickly without strong material or an engaging onscreen partner. On the plus side, Ice Cube is an expert comedic straight man. His fierce glare, commanding presence, and ace timing mesh perfectly with Hart, and together the two remain watchable even when they aren't doing or saying anything memorable or amusing. Despite having four screenwriters, 95 percent of the movie feels improvised. That doesn't mean it feels natural and in the moment, but that the actors knew their dialogue was terrible and Hart was allowed to just ramble.
Director Tim Story fails when he tries anything other than just putting the camera down and showing his two leads. A pair of action set pieces at the end of the film are edited in such a way as to make both comprehensibility and humor impossible, and there's a rather unforgivable continuity error in the opening sequence when a shoot-out and foot chase that starts at night turns on a dime into a car chase that's transpiring in broad daylight.
Ride Along is a programmer -- a film that is exactly what it claims to be, that fills a need in the moviegoing marketplace. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's also no particular reason to make an effort to see it, either.