Fortunately, Akiva Schaffer’s The Watch turned out to be exactly what I had expected. Rather, it achieved the status of a light-hearted comedy that your dad would like that it had promised to be. Co-written by Seth Rogen and Jared Stern, The Watch tells the story of a local neighborhood watch in a small Ohio town who realize they are living among aliens. Already a comedic recipe a-brewin, right? Well, throw in Ben Stiller (how I missed him), Vince Vaughn (how I missed him even more), Jonah Hill, Richard Ayoade, Billy Crudup (who was oddly uncredited), Will Forte, and Rosemarie DeWitt, and you got yourself a comedy reminiscent of the early 2000s. Oh how I miss not only the two lead actors, but also that time gone by. Well, thankfully, The Watch provides the perfect dose of comedic nostalgia.

Perhaps the best part of The Watch, as with all buddy comedies, was the onscreen (and hopefully off-screen as well) chemistry between the four main neighborhood watchmen. I mean, what’s a buddy comedy without the feeling of being real friends? Not a buddy comedy, I’d venture to say. Well, there’s no need to venture to say it here, because if this movie did one thing right it was the chemistry. This was so much the case that I found myself longing to be, as season one Leslie Knope would say, in their boys club.

The Watch also succeeded in its comedic timing as well as in its heartfelt moments. As with most films in this genre, there is a balance often hard to navigate between comedy and emotional revelation. The Watch not only found an appropriate balance between the two, but also was able to find the right timing of the comedic moments, with hardly any joke falling completely flat. Additionally, there were even a couple of twists among the comedic and heart-warming moments.

Overall, I enjoyed sitting through The Watch. But please don’t get me wrong, The Watch isn’t a great movie, or even a great comedy. It remains difficult to fault, however, since it achieved what it set out to do: The Watch was an entertaining, light-hearted comedy that, in time to come, will easily find itself on in the background of some party.

RENT IT.