Since comedies are my favorite genre, I am constantly subjecting myself to watch a comedy periodically hoping I'll come across a gem. As years go by, the fewer and farther between are there a great amount of quality comedies. Even though the trailer didn't wow me, I decided to go and see "Night School" for myself and it was a little better than I expected, however still not a good film.
Teddy Walker (Kevin Hart) is a successful salesman whose life takes an unexpected turn when he accidentally blows up his place of employment. With this situation, he loses his job only to have an extremely difficult time gaining further employment, especially since he hadn't even finished high school. Forced to attend night school to obtain his GED, Teddy soon finds himself dealing with a group of misfit students including Mackenzie (Rob Riggle), Theresa (Mary Lynn Rajskub), Luis (Al Madrigal), Mila (Anne Winters) and Bobby (Fat Joe), his former high school nemesis, Stewart (Taran Gillam) and a feisty teacher, Carrie (Tiffany Haddish) who doesn't think he's too bright.
Others to round out the cast are Romany Malco as Jaylen, Ben Schwartz as Marvin, Megalyn Echikunwoke as Lisa, Teddy's fiancé, Keith David as Gerald Walker, Teddy's dad, Yvonne Orji as Maya Walker, Teddy's mom, Bresha Webb as Denise, Teddy's sister and Owen Harn as Randy, Theresa's husband.
This was executed well by seasoned director Malcolm D. Lee ("The Best Man" '99, "Undercover Brother" '02, "Roll Bounce" '05, "Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins" '08, "Soul Men" '08, "Scary Movie 5" '13, "The Best Man Holiday" '13, "Barbershop: The Next Cut" '16, "Winning Ugly" (TV movie) '16, "Girls Trip" '17) plus TV and a short. The eclectic characters simply were made fluid by the way Brown was able to stage and pace his actors strategically in order to emit reality and believability. Although every project he's been attached with isn't always the best film overall, his direction is certainly spot on with this. It was adequately written by Kevin Hart, Harry Ratchford, Joey Wells, Matthew Kellard, Nicholas Stoller and John Hamburg. First of all, who said this film would be written the best having six, count them, six writers with their hands in the pot? Secondly, all but two of the writers have limited feature film writing experience. Point being, if a production has to have six writers, the majority should be seasoned, lest you end up with a disjointed, choppy screenplay as with this. Interesting that both Stoller and Hamburg have the lion's share of the experience yet they are listed last on the billing. Could it be that they were attempting to give the other writers a 'leg up'? Not sure, but this definitely needed polish. Was it a total wash? Absolutely not. It had potential and was certainly better than the trailer--it did not sell this film, but still had issues. The best thing about this was that after the film got going, which took a while, was the message that these misfit characters had to learn in order to live a decent and happy life. Trials. We all need them in order to be that person we all strive to become. And there were some funny lines and moments which surprised me. I'll tell you, if this was rated R, I wouldn't have given this film the time of day, because the R rating, in comedies, virtually bumps up the level of sexual and drug references and the amount of four-letter words used, which cheapens any comedy in my book.
Is this worthy of viewing? Well, if you're a Hart fan, you'll probably love this, but in my opinion of this is to Netflix it. It's a fair comedy, but not a well written one. Personally, the producers should've left the writing up to Stoller and Hamburg. Two seasoned writers would've given this otherwise funny premise the kick it needed.
Out of 4 Stars: 2.5 Rated: PG-13 111mins.
No comments:
Post a Comment