Following the unexpected success of the first movie Ride Along 2 was always on the cards and without the need to spend time building the lead characters this time around it jumps straight into things as we see Antonio Pope (Benjamin Bratt) speaking with a port official about stolen money which doesn’t end well for the thief, so there’s no mystery about who the bad guy is this time around. Popes hacker A.J (Ken Jeong) is getting cold feet and wants out so he steal files from Pope and goes on the run hoping to blackmail his way to freedom.

In the meantime James Payton (Ice Cube) is attempting to infiltrate a drug gang run by Troy (Glen Powell) with his partner Mayfield (Tyrese Gibson) while Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) is now out of the academy but is still clinging to James in his continued attempts to prove that he’s a good officer so when James and his partner get into bother he decides to help out but ends up causing a shoot out where Mayfield is injured. After a subsequent car chase where James manages to catch his man and finds a flash drive necklace he is assigned by his boss Lieutenant Brooks (Bruce McGill) to head for Miami so he can chase the lead on who Troy was working for. Ben tries to convince James to allow him to tag along and assist, which James unsurprisingly refuses but when Angela (Tika Sumpter) pleads with James to allow Ben to travel in order to keep him out of her hair while she is planning their wedding he thinks that it may be an opportunity to prove to Ben once and for all that he cannot make it as a cop and get him out of his face so the two men, along with some assistance from local Miami office Maya Cruz (Olivia Munn) go after their man.

In what is essentially the same movie as the first with a bigger budget, a shift in location and the addition of some further stars the only real plot shift of significance is that Hart has gone from a wannabe cop to a new recruit and instead of dating Ice Cubes sister, she is now planning a wedding.

Jeong has seemingly been added to the mix for Hart to work his comedy alongside, this is particularly evident in their Star Wars argument. Munn has some moments but never seems to be anything more than a filler to give Ice Cube some potential romantic interest and Bratt is barely used which was a shame. So while the larger budget has allowed for the destruction of more cars it doesn’t seem to have allowed the script writers come up with anything radically different, although given the financial success of the first movie I’m sure they will throw back the ‘if it’s not broken then why fix it’ line.

The problem for me is, the first movie wasn’t that good despite what the box office success may suggest so watching what was essentially the same movie again done nothing for me. Unfortunately, given the budgetary success this movie also achieved I wouldn’t be surprised to see a third movie appearing. All i can say is that we’ve had numerous Rush Hour, Lethal Weapon and Bad Boy movies so do we really need the same premise again?

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10