I didn’t see the first Ride Along but, a few nights ago, a particularly dreary play that let out fairly early opened up my evening for my favourite thing- wandering into a movie theatre and seeing whatever I hadn’t seen yet. The problem is that this month is always like a movie wasteland for me with the cineplexes filling every screen with Oscar nominee re-releases (don’t you know I saw Steve Jobs in October?!) so I’m not left with many choices. True, I was only looking at films that started after 10pm, but my only choice (literally, my only choice, in the entire 20-screen cineplex) was Ride Along 2.

So I saw Ride Along 2, having not seen Ride Along 1.

Of course, with a movie this silly and simple, I didn’t need to have seen Ride Along 1 to be able to follow Ride Along 2. It’s your basic buddy cop caper with a decent supporting turn by the grossly underrated (and perennially underserved) Olivia Munn, predictable supporting turns by Ken Jeong and Sherri Shepherd, and a decent villainous turn by Benjamin Bratt. Kevin Hart and Ice Cube have surprisingly good chemistry and I think more movies about black cops certainly couldn’t do the world any harm (it would help if they were better movies, but still). In fact, the multiculturalism of this film in general is pretty good with actors from three different non-white races playing all seven major roles. It’s a dumb movie, but it’s got some things going for it.

Don’t bother to see the first Ride Along first… unless it’s good. Is it good? It’s probably not good.