After five long years of waiting for Akiva Schaffer to direct a big screen follow-up to his ludicrous 2007 comedy, Hot Rod, the teaser trailer for his new film, Neighborhood Watch, finally hit the Internet back in February, promising more hilarity to come. But before excitement could really build for the film, its marketing efforts hit a pretty huge snag. A Florida teen named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a member of his local neighborhood watch, the story became national news, and suddenly Neighborhood Watch’s teaser – which featured its protagonists suspiciously eying and threatening neighborhood children – looked to be in really poor taste. In response to the incident, the trailer was pulled from theaters.
Though the aftermath of the Martin shooting is ongoing and is still fresh in everyone’s minds, Schaffer and company still have a movie to promote, so Neighborhood Watch is back with a new title and a new red band trailer. From this point forward the film seems to be going by the name The Watch, and its new marketing has shifted its focus away from a group of overzealous men terrorizing their neighborhood and turned the spotlight more toward its alien invasion elements.
Well, the new trailer puts its focus on the alien invasion elements…and all of the filth that’s being spewed from the character’s mouths. If this new ad is any indication, The Watch is going to be full of raunchy sex talk, and it’s going to contain a whole heck of a lot of cursing. If listening to Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill do their motor-mouthed miscreant routines is your idea of a good time, then this one should be right in your wheelhouse.
But fans of Richard Ayoade should be warned: the new trailer still sees the actor being criminally underused. Hopefully the next ad they put out does a better job of selling what this guy has to offer to the mainstream. He could very well be The Watch’s secret weapon when it comes to stopping everyone from talking about how it’s linked to a tragic shooting and getting them to start talking about how funny it looks. [IGN]