The new action comedy buddy cop film Stuber has a very bad title and not particularly good trailers. So I went anyway because that’s what I do. And my low expectations were, surprisingly, surpassed. The movie is getting pretty bad reviews but I low key enjoyed it.
Stuber is about a massive hulk of a police detective played by Dave Bautista. He’s on the trail of a drug kingpin but the case has gone cold. So he takes the opportunity to get LASIK and, that very day, gets a tip. But now he can’t see so he grabs an Uber as driven by meek, sensitive, brunch-eating Kumail Nanjiani. And now we have our mismatched leads in a rather light and goofy (and violent) action comedy.
An action comedy that I laughed and smiled my way through from start to finish. It’s not the funniest thing ever and, of course, not all the jokes land but enough of them did that I surprisingly kind of dig this film. The two leads work well together and Bautista plays a tough guy who can’t quite make out the bad guys he’s interrogating quite well. And Nanjiani uses his usual deadpan sarcasm to great effect as the unwilling driver to a beast of a cop.
Not all is perfect of course. The plot is just an excuse for the situational jokes but that’s no big deal. The characters are often inconsistent from scene to scene. Plus the action is filmed with too much shaky cam and is hard to follow. Which is unfortunate because the bad guy is Hong Kong action star Iko Uwais from The Raid movies. He knows his action so its weird it’s filmed so poorly here.
But, regardless of that list of problems, the core comedy of the film carried it for me. Which is, of course, tough as recommendations go because comedy, moreso than anything else in movies, is pretty subjective. But I enjoyed it and I think there’s something worth seeing in this film. Not the best action comedy flick out there but the cast is having a good time and the jokes mostly land so I’d recommend it well enough.
Score: 81