• Home
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Lists
    • Yearly Top Tens
    • Trailers
Menu

World of Reel

Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number
Home
Tom Holland Says Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ “Is Going To Be Unlike Anything We’ve Ever Seen”
IMG_6808.jpg
‘Naked Gun’ Reboot is 84 Minutes
IMG_6807.jpg
‘Superman’ Earns $23M Previews, But How Much Does It Need to Break Even?
Screenshot 2025-07-11 092340.png
Stellan Skarsgård Claims Ingmar Bergman Was a Nazi: “Cried When Hitler Died"
Screenshot 2025-07-11 091035.png
Hal Hartley Returns with First Film in a Decade — Kickstarter-Funded ‘Where to Land’ Made on $300K Budget
Featured
Capture.PNG
Aug 19, 2019
3-Hour ‘Midsommar' Director's Cut Screened in NYC
Aug 19, 2019

This year’s 12th edition of the Scary Movies festival at Film at Lincoln Center premiered Ari Aster’s extended version of “Midsommar” this past Saturday.

Aug 19, 2019

World of Reel

  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Lists
  • More
    • Yearly Top Tens
    • Trailers

‘Stuber' Review: Buddy-Cop Movie Wastes the Talents of Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista

July 12, 2019 Jordan Ruimy

‘Raid’ star Iko Uwais shows up in “Stuber” but instead of taking advantage of his athletic talents, the movie has Uwais go through such mundane and lazily set-up action sequences.

The entire movie works purely on the ingenious casting decision of having Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista buddy-cop their way through a pedantic plot. Nanjiani plays Stu, a customer-service obsessed Uber driver, he badly wants those five star ratings, that has his newly leased Prius taken over by Vic (Bautista), a workaholic cop hunting Uwais’ villain. And so, Stu is stuck being chauffeur for Vic. Hilarity and lots head shots ensue.

“Stuber” is directed by Michael Dowse (“Goon”) but he can’t stop the consistent contrivances happening at every turn here. Also, Stu’s motivations to stay and continue chauffeuring Vic are fairly muddled; Does it mostly have to do with Vic’s threats of giving him a zero star rating? Regardless, It’s all packaged in nostalgic 1980s buddy-cop narrative form — an R-rated action picture which tries to mix hard-earned goofy laughs with graphic violence. However, what Dowse forgets is that the very best movies of that ‘80s action era (‘“Midnight Run,” “48 Hours” “Lethal Weapon”) were driven by the humorous and believable banter between the two leads, but that, more importantly, there was also solid drama— the latter barely exists in “Stuber.”

Yes, Nanjiana and Bautista prove to be a decent pairing, uttering their lines in ways that can, at times, leads to hilariously delivered banter. Other times, however, the bromance falls flat. The script, by Tripper Clancy, tends to waste the talents of Bautista, an underrated actor - his character feels one-note and uninspired (Vic is just a dead-serious, humorless and pedantic jerk). Jonathan Shcwartz’ editing also struggles to find a groove in Clancy’s messily structured screenplay. Nanjiani, on the other hand, finds a way to play around the rote dialogue and ad-libs his way towards a few laughs.

Of course, the actors shouldn’t be faulted for how flat “Stuber” ends up feeling — they try to rise the mediocrity around them into something watchable. They barely can. [C+]

In REVIEWS Tags Stuber, Dave Bautista, Kumail Nanjiani, Review, movie
← Second Season of ‘Big Little Lies' Filled With Off-Set Drama; Director Fired, Reshoots, HBO Butting In. ‘The Art of Self-Defense' Review: Toxic Masculinity Is Rarely Portrayed This Accurately →

FOLLOW US!


Trending

Featured
Screenshot 2025-06-27 103702.png
‘Parasite' Tops NYT’s 100 Best Films of the 21st Century Poll [Updated]
Screenshot 2025-06-27 133955.png
James Cameron Calls ‘Oppenheimer’ a “Moral Cop-Out” for Not Showing Japanese Bombing Aftermath
Screenshot 2025-06-27 130059.png
‘Jane': Alfonso Cuarón's Philip K. Dick Biopic is Still Happening
Screenshot 2025-06-27 092658.png
Denis Villeneuve Will Only Direct One Bond Film, Without Final Cut
IMG_6364.jpg
Warner Bros. High on Michael Mann’s ‘Heat 2’ Script, Casting Officially Underway

Critics Polls

Featured
Capture.PNG
Critics Poll: ‘Vertigo’ Named Best Film of the 1950s, Over 120 Participants
B16BAC21-5652-44F6-9E83-A1A5C5DF61D7.jpeg
Critics Poll: Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Tops Our 1960s Critics Poll
Capture.PNG
Critics Poll: ‘The Godfather’ Named Best Movie of the 1970s
public.jpeg
Critics Poll: ‘Do the Right Thing' Named Best Movie of the 1980s
Critics Poll: ‘Mulholland Drive' Named Best Film of the 2000s
g4.jpg
Critics' Poll: ‘Goodfellas' Named Best Movie of the 1990s
Critics Poll: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road' Named Best Movie of the 2010s
World of Reel tagline.PNG
 

Content

Contribute

Hire me

 

Support

Advertise

Donate

 

About

Team

Contact

Privacy Policy

Site designed by Jordan Ruimy © 2023