Like your smartphone, it's a testament to the theory of interchangeable parts, a perfectly engineered product that, if you're charitable, you might also think of in terms of art....But every time I started to believe that there's some parodic impulse behind the filmmakers' recasting of clichés, Cube's character would punch a suspect in custody or commit some other violation of civil liberties that the film invites us to cheer.

Ride Along 2, which moves the action from Atlanta to Miami, plays more like a remake than a sequel.

Ride Along 2 is the movie equivalent of a cover band. We’ve seen it all before, and often in much better films.

The implausibilities, cop-movie checkboxes, and mildly wasted talent make Ride Along 2 lazy, but not downright loathsome. If anything, it’s perhaps slightly more amusing and agreeable than the original—a sign of how little that film’s seemingly surefire premise wound up mattering.

Hart, the firecracker that he is, has a fitting comedic (and crime-fighting) partner out there somewhere. But it’s not in the Ride Along series.