Ride Along
Director: Tim Story
Cast: Kevin Hart, Ice Cube, Tika Sumpter, John Leguizamo, Laurence Fishburne
Universal Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 100 Minutes
Release Date: January 17, 2013

Directed by Tim Story (Think Like a Man), Ride Along stars Kevin Hart as Ben, a hyperactive hardcore gamer who joins his potential brother-in-law James (Ice Cube), a detective, on a 24-hour patrol of Atlanta in order to prove himself worthy of marrying Angela (Tika Sumpter), James’ sister.

Tim Story is the filmmaker responsible for such cinematic atrocities as Taxi, Fantastic Four, and Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The director came onto the scene in 2002 with the well-received comedy Barbershop, which also stars Ice Cube, but hasn’t made a decent movie since.

I’d like to tell you that Ride Along serves as a set of shock paddles to Story’s flatlining career, but this contrived mess of clichés is dead on arrival. An odd-couple comedy starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart has a lot of potential – just look at this clip from Conan – but Ride Along is such a colossal misfire because of its uninspired, unfunny script.

The stars of the two greatest modern boxing movie epics could be getting in the ring for a cinematic heavyweight clash. Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro, the respective stars of the Oscar-winners Rocky and Raging Bull, are both in negotiations to star in Grudge Match for Warner Bros. This would mark the second time the two Italian-American film legends have appeared in a movie together, the first being the 1997 James Mangold-directed crime drama Cop Land (pictured above).

According to Lucas Shaw at The Wrap, Stallone and De Niro would play “two aging boxers who plan one final match against one another.”