Ride Along 2

This painfully unfunny buddy-cop comedy sequel feels shoddy and exhausted from the start. Tim Story’s 2014 original seemed better plugged into the tensions between exuberant motormouth Ben (Kevin Hart) and his girlfriend’s brother, the perpetually scowling James (Ice Cube), an ice-cold Atlanta cop he hopes to impress. We return to their story with Ben now a rookie on the force and one week away from his wedding.

Once again, crime looms – this time in the form of a silky-voiced Miami drug lord (Benjamin Bratt) – and even before the bickering duo head south, you can predict every bikini-babe-adorned plot twist. Jokes range from fashion faux pas (Ben dresses like he’s ready for his cameo on ‘Miami Vice’) to Asian-bashing (Ken Jeong – Mr Chow in ‘The Hangover’ – never gets to cut loose with his wicked tongue) to ogling women – detective Maya (Olivia Munn) is introduced in a sports bra.

On purely technical grounds, a couple of action scenes transcend the mundanity and there’s one surreal sight: an ‘Apocalypse Now’ gag with the determined Hart rising out of the water in slo mo to the strains of Wagner. But mostly, this is the definition of a waste of time, aggressively derivative yet barely digestible.