Once again, I have spent a lot of money to go to a movie theater to see a movie that I thought would be great. This time though, it ended up being not as great as I had hoped. I saw “Central Intelligence” starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Johnson plays Bob Stone, an agent in the CIA. He contacts Hart’s character, Calvin Joyner, one of his “friends” from high school to help catch a man called the Black Badger.
Every time the trailer was on TV, I got super excited because it looked so funny and, honestly, how could it not be with Kevin Hart. And it was funny. But it wasn’t as funny as I had hoped. Kevin Hart was probably the funniest character of the film because, as seen in the trailers, he is scared out of his mind and not wanting anything to do with this dangerous mission that Bob is on. On the other hand, Johnson’s funny lines mostly centered on his weird character. He seemed to be mentally like a child at some points, probably do to the psychological damage done to him by high school bullies, which if you’ve seen the trailers, you probably can guess what happened to him in high school.
The problem with the previews, though, was that they did not showcase the movie correctly. The promotional clips always focused on the fact that Bob is in the CIA and Calvin wants no part of it, which okay, that’s accurate on a basic level. But the movie is way more complex than that. Bob is in the CIA, but soon after you meet him, it is suggested that he has gone rogue and recently murdered his previous partner. Then there’s the psychological problems that I mentioned earlier which, if I recall correctly, were not at all hinted at in the previews. The promotional material made Bob seem like a strong, intelligent CIA operative whereas the actual film showed him as someone with issues. I don’t think it was that big of an issue, but it definitely would have changed the way I viewed the movie before I walked into it.
On top of that, so many characters are missing from the previews that shocked me when they appeared in the movie. Actually, most of the characters outside of Johnson’s and Hart’s made little to no appearance in the trailers. For example, Amy Ryan (Holly Flax on “The Office”) portrayed Agent Pamela Harris, another member of the CIA and was not necessarily the main antagonist of the film (or was she?), but definitely caused problems for the two protagonists. Then there’s Danielle Nicolet’s character Maggie, Calvin’s high school sweetheart and eventually his wife. I don’t remember her in the previews, but she was very important to the plot. Finally, Aaron Paul played Phil, Bob’s previous partner. Besides the graphic death scene in the flashbacks, this character is important in ways that I don’t really know how to describe. (Okay so on a side note, Melissa McCarthy plays a random character at the end and it was honestly one of my favorite parts of the film.) The point is, there were many more important characters than just Bob and Calvin, but they weren’t shown in many promotional materials.
In the end, the movie didn’t really meet my expectations mostly because the trailers did not properly prepare me for the final product. It was funny and I would recommend it, but it’s probably not going to end up in my top 10 films of the year (which by typing that sentence may or may not have given me an idea for an article at the end of this year). Have you seen “Central Intelligence” yet? If so, what did you think?
