Some films get very lucky with topical gags hitting the mark more effectively than the writers could have realised. The one about Taylor Swift here got a very big laugh when I saw it. This is a likable odd-couple action comedy from director and co-writer Rawson Marshall Thurber, who gave us Dodgeball. I suspect he has been influenced by Ivan Reitman’s Twins from 1988, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. (I even wondered if he had seen Dominik Moll’s black-comic classic Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien, from 2000.) It starts with that sine qua non of the modern studio comedy: the “anti-nostalgia prelude” sequence set in high school when the protagonists were hilariously naff. It’s wish fulfilment for comedy writers, of course, who need to reach back into their schooldays and right wrongs. Kevin Hart is Calvin, a hero of his high school and the guy most likely to succeed; Dwayne Johnson plays Bob, the fat loser who gets bullied – Calvin stands up for him, pretty much just out of pity. Twenty years later, with a reunion looming, Calvin is the loser with a boring accountant job, facing up to the fact that he peaked in high school. Out of the blue, Bob turns up, now a gym-built giant with a goofy, amiable air of friendliness, but he has a mysterious job, and he needs a favour from his old protector. Entertaining, good-humoured fun, with Hart putting on his squeaky, helium-voiced panic.
