Look at Eddie and Pete’s expressions in the photo above, that is what I looked like watching the entirety of this movie.

Knowing this is from the guy (Tim Story) that directed Ride Along 2, I shouldn’t have had super high expectations, but I was still underwhelmed. A veteran armored truck worker (Murphy) teams up with an immature rookie (Davidson) and things go a little off routine. This is a heist movie and a comedy, but I’ll get to the latter later.. If you compare this to other heist movies, you won’t have anything new to take away. The action is mainly involving a long Fury Road-like car chase that is shot like it was meant for a canceled network TV show. So, if you like to watch poorly shot car wrecks, you’ll be into this movie.

I’ve always kind of liked Pete Davidson, his demeanor and humor have always been appealing in a cynical and endearing way. Those strengths are mostly played here, except when they aren’t. When you have the comedic genius of Eddie Murphy to go head to head with, it’s hard to stay in the fight. Murphy on the other hand, is still at the top of his game. Everything he said is perfectly delivered and it feels like it was written specifically for him. Both of them together was a bit of a generational mismatch.

The antagonist group led by Keke Palmer was quite the group of generic bad guys. All the effort was put into the duo so that this aspect fell completely flat. Keke as a voice has a strong presence, but as a character with an unsure approach she isn’t fully understandable. This movie struggled to decide which side of a few genres it wanted to fall on, and ultimately fails at most of them.

I grew very tired of what this was trying to do very quickly, that I know I could have slept through the second act and not missed a beat. It’s not as clever as it thinks it is, and its setting even adds to it feeling like Ocean’s 3, because that’s how many brain cells you need to enjoy it. I’m so glad Eddie Murphy is back on our screens making us laugh, but I wish there was a little more around him to make it substantial.

4/10