Stuber, a regrettable portmanteau of the name Stu and the rideshare company Uber, is a new action comedy from the director of Goon starring two charismatic up-and-comers hot off the heels of their breakout roles. Retired pro-wrester turned action hero Dave Bautista stole every scene in every Marvel movie he’s in as Drax, the vengeful alien warrior who takes everything 100 percent literally, and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, co-star of HBO’s Silicon Valley, was nominated for an Academy Award last year for best original screenplay along with his wife for their true story rom-com The Big Sick, in which he also stars.
If any of that tickles your fancy as it did mine, Stuber will make a great Sunday couch movie, but the rest of this review might only irritate your fancy.
Apparently, Dave and Kumail became best buds during the making of Stuber, which is a lovely story even if it doesn’t translate to great chemistry on screen. Stuber is a rather conventional buddy action comedy, mixed with a little bit of the old fish-out-of-water sauce, and topped with the trappings of the late twenty-teens. Bautista plays Vic Manning, a tough detective who is too busy catching criminals to bond with his daughter Nicole (Morales). When he gets Lasik eye surgery, blinding him for 24 hours, he must use Uber to get around and chase his nemesis, because he’s a very vengeful workaholic, sight be damned. Enter Stu, sporting-goods store employee by day, five-star rating obsessed Uber driver by not day. As Vic tracks his perp and Stu acts as his reluctant eyes and wheels, Bautista’s deadpan tough guy act and Nanjiani’s sarcastic nerdisms never quite connect like they ought to. Vic’s blindness seems to come and go at the filmmaker’s discretion, and Stu has a sub-plot straight out of an ’80s sex comedy that is pretty uncomfortable, even after the too-little, too-late twist on the trope.
The highlight of the film is when Vic and Stu finally break, getting into a whirlwind brawl at Stu’s sporting goods store, brains vs. brawn pitted against each other in a location full of improvised weapons.
Something about Stuber feels old, like the script was sitting in a filing cabinet since the invention of Lasik. The plot is predictable and a little problematic at times, though the biggest problem is that it isn’t funnier. There are hints that this is a current movie—the prominence of Uber jokes, references to how gender and race relations have changed (if only slightly) since this type of movie was in its heyday—but those nods seem like ad-libs to a script that was originally titled Staxi and had Sly Stallone and Chris Tucker attached. Given the talent involved, it’s just unfortunate that—unlike the day—this script couldn’t be saved.
