And Fat Rock steals the whole trailer.
Granted, this buddy comedy doesn’t look nearly as bad as I was expecting. They’re smartly going the GET HARD route, letting Kevin Hart play the straight man opposite The Rock’s outlandish, weird C.I.A. agent, and there’s some decent-looking action and stuntwork on display.
The core premise has them as high school peers who end up working together for…some dangerous stuff, but the idea of former dork Johnson getting revenge on cool-kid Hart definitely has potential, and some of this is actually pretty funny. Dwayne Johnson surprised a lot of folks when he first went full-on goofy in BE COOL, and with his oiled-up superman HOBBS and his super-suave BALLERS character being the primary forms The Rock takes these days, it’s a treat to see him mug and be self-effacing.
And so what that young Rock looks exactly like young Ryan Reynolds in JUST FRIENDS. I’m man enough to admit that I’ll pay 12 bucks just to see that scene, even with it’s weird sub-CAPTAIN AMERICA VFX.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE is likely not done with the Johnson puns until June 17th, 2016.
