Central Intelligence (2016)

Bullied as a teen for being overweight, Bob Stone (Dwayne Johnson) shows up to his high school reunion looking fit and muscular. While there, he finds Calvin Joyner (Kevin Hart), a fast-talking accountant who misses his glory days as a popular athlete. Stone is now a lethal CIA agent who needs Central Calvin’s number skills to help him save the compromised U.S. spy satellite system. Together, the former classmates encounter shootouts, espionage and double-crosses while trying to prevent worldwide chaos.
I’m all for movies Central with great characters, thoughtful themes, interesting plots, and entertaining action sequences, but there’s something to be said for leaving well enough alone when only a couple of elements are working. InCentral Intelligence, for instance, the only success the filmmakers manage to generate come from the two leads, Central Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. Whenever it tries to do something else – tell a generic spy story, relay points about overcoming past trauma and fixing your life if you’re unhappy with it, tease us with double-crosses, or thrill us with shootouts – it feels like those elements just get in the way of what we’re enjoying.

The plot is silly and should be inconsequential, but the film hopes we care. It sees two former high school classmates team up to get a MacGuffin that’ll stop terrorists from doing something that might impact someone sometime. Bob Stone (Johnson) was a perpetually bullied overweight geek, and now looks like The Rock, while Calvin Joyner (Hart) was beloved by all and is now an accountant. Central Stone’s in the CIA, and he enlists Joyner to help him solve a case – all while other CIA agents hunt them down, claiming that Stone’s gone insane, murdered his former partner, and is working with the terrorists for his own profit.