A weak comedy, Stuber wastes its potential by presenting a dull narrative, silly jokes and poor character chemistry. It may have its moments but is always brought down by its seemingly aimless story that chooses to mix in all sorts of ridiculous plot points.
This movie had all the right material yet managed to trade it in for cliches and misplaced comedy. The dull narrative didn’t make good use of its lead stars and failed to create any chemistry between the two. I mean both Kumail Nunjiani and Dave Bautista could’ve done so much more with their roles. It felt as though this film didn’t know how to treat its characters and just decided to place them in the most stereotypical and boring roles it could find. ‘Stuber’ follows a detective who recruits an Uber driver as he pursues a bloodthirsty terrorist.
The whole first act feels like a strange and lazy introduction that seeks to spoon feed audiences the information. Too much unnecessary exposition was present all throughout. Predictably was another constant issue that brought this movie down. One of the antagonist’s motivations were left completely unexplained. Character depth really needed to be worked on and I couldn’t really connect with any of the characters on screen. Whenever it wanted to tackle one of its plot points it would it would suddenly mix in something irrelevant and create a mess of the situation.
Here’s the thing however, despite these issues the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and thanks to that there is some sort of entertainment. I didn’t get all too bored throughout the runtime and there were a few good laughs here and there. Had this movie gotten a better treatment it would’ve been far more enjoyable. Nanjiani is a really talented comedian whose potential was wasted in this underwhelming comedy. Nonetheless, If you’re looking for something light then perhaps you should give this a shot.