After debuting in the comedy “I Heart
Huckabees,” Jonah Hill has steadily posited himself as a solid hilarious
support in the string of his movies that followed. Appearing afterwards in acclaimed hits like
“The 40-Year Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” “Superbad,” “Forgettting Sarah
Marshall,” “Get Him to the Greek,” “Moneyball” and the most recent “21 Jump
Street” with Channing Tatum which is Hill’s highest grossing film after
“Superbad.”
His latest movie “The Watch” which is
about to open in cinemas this September 5 (in Phils. cinemas) allowed him to
work with Ben Stiller, one of moviedom’s great comic talents. In “The Watch,” four suburban guys formed a patrol which they
tagged as ‘Neighborhood Watch’ after a mysterious incident left a security
guard lifeless in the town’s superstore Costco.
Headed by the civic minded Evan (Ben Stiller), he recruits fun-loving
family guy Bob (Vince Vaughn), tough-talking ‘wild card’ Franklin (Jonah Hill)
and the recent divorcé Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade).
Even with – or maybe because of – their
spiffy new “Watch” jackets, which are emblazoned with fiery wings and a tiger
head, the not-so-fearsome foursome initially gets no respect from the residents
they’re supposedly looking out for. A
group of kids plaster them with eggs, and the local cops think they’re a joke: the Hardy Boys…only far less savvy.
“When they formed this ‘band of
brothers’, the guys thought, sure, they might encounter some weird neighborhood
stuff – maybe a burglar here, or peeping tom there – but suddenly they realize
they’ve facing something extraordinary,” says producer Shawn Levy, the director
of such hits as “Night at the Museum” and “Real Steel.” “And The Watch is not just unprepared or
unqualified, it’s not remotely equipped to deal with this problem; yet it’s all
on them to stop it.”
The youngest member of the team is
Franklin (Jonah Hill), a twentysomething, militant looking tough guy with,
notes Schaffer “a sweetness just underneath.”
(He still lives at home with his mom.)
Franklin has a planet-size chip on his shoulder because he’s been
rejected as a candidate for the police force and all other law enforcement
organizations. So for Franklin, The Watch is the only way he can legally kick
ass and take names. “Franklin is
alienated from, well everything,” says Hill.
“He’s very strange and very funny.”
Coming off his Oscar®-nominated
performance in the drama “Moneyball,” and executive producing and starring in
the critically-hailed hit “21 Jump Street,” Hill was not looking to return to
the kind of raucous comedy that had propelled him to superstardom (like
“Superbad” and “Pineapple Express”), but he “couldn’t resist the chance to
perform opposite alongside Ben, Vince and Richard,” notes the actor. “It was something I had to do.” Moreover, “if I was going to do another broad
comedy, I wanted it to have no basis in reality, and portray a character that
could say or do anything. Plus, anytime
you put an extreme amount of danger in the hands of irresponsible people, you
know the results are going to be really wild.”
More of Jonah Hill and the movie in this
interactive trailer of “The Watch” http://www.youtube.com/thewatchintl.
“The Watch” is a 20th Century
Fox movie to be distributed by Warner Bros. in local cinemas (Sept. 5).