“Ride Along 2”: Is More Always Better?

Ice Cube and Kevin Hart are back in the action comedy duo “Ride Along 2.” After watching this film, I had to ask myself, is more always better?

It seems as though movie directors took a blockbuster film and try to cash in on the hype and push out a sequel almost instantly to the point that it has become cliché for movie fans to anticipate sequels being terrible or at least sub par.

Some movies, however, find their niche when directing a sequel and produce a movie some would say are even better than its predecessors, take “Kick Ass 2,” for example. Now, everyone has their own opinion as to which is better as everyone has their own tastes in film.

“Ride Along 2” fell under the category of an undesired cash crop sequel that no one really asked for. The comedy duo of Ice Cube and Kevin Hart are right back to where they started in almost a copy and paste story to the first movie.

I found it hard to root for each protagonist, as I felt almost no chemistry between the two characters, Ice Cube’s “officer James” comes off as more of a bully to Kevin Hart’s Ben instead of a brother figure. This really made it hard to believe why Ben would continue to put his life on the line for someone especially his partner and brother in law.

To be fair, this movie had me chuckling at times with some simple and mindless jokes but eventually they became to predictable and repetitive that really took away from the joke making scenes kind of drag on wondering, “what’s he going to deal with next?”

In the end, I would say if you are a die hard fan of the first “Ride Along” then maybe this is the comedy film for you, for the casual movie-goer, I would say to save your money and just wait until this comes out on Netflix or Redbox. I would give “Ride Along 2” a 1.5/5 stars.