Mark Reviews Movies: NIGHT SCHOOL (2018)

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | September 27, 2018

Kevin Hart can be funny. Tiffany Haddish can be funny. Pairing the two of them sounds like a fine idea.

They have different but seemingly complementary comic energies: Hart excels at putting forth a frantic but controlled energy, and from the little we've seen of her so far, Haddish's persona appears to be all about barely controlled impulses. Beyond the two stars, a lot of people in Night School can be funny, and the movie banks on putting a lot of talented comic actors together in the hopes that they'll figure out some way to make the material funny.

This is rarely a good idea, especially when the filmmakers only have the bare minimum of a premise with which to work. The setup for this movie, forged by no less than six credited screenwriters, involves Hart's character going back to his old high school for a night class in order to prepare for the GED test. See, he was never good at school (There's an early joke that he can't even spell his name), and on the day of the SAT, he decided to drop out and get an education from "the school of life."

Seventeen years later, Hart's Teddy Walker has a decent job selling barbecue grills and is in line to take over the store when the owner retires. He also has a beautiful and far more successful girlfriend named Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke), who doesn't care that Teddy doesn't make much money, but she also doesn't seem to care that he spends much more money than he has in order to impress her. She'd pay for things, but Teddy is worried that she'd leave him if he let her pay for anything.

As for why Lisa doesn't try stop her boyfriend's reckless spending habits, asking such a question would be expecting too much from a comedy that doesn't possess any real conflict—and, therefore, has to create a completely illogical one in order to justify its story. A massive, accidental explosion—triggered by Teddy's fire hazard-friendly proposal—at the shop, which sends Teddy flying into the windshield of his expensive car, helps, as well. A depressing reminder seems necessary: This movie is credited to six screenwriters.

The other thing to know about Teddy is that he's a hustler, a B.S. artist, or, in plain terms, a liar. He's not hurting anyone, of course, except himself. Such an observation might be reading too deeply into a movie in which every other scene appears to have been improvised. For his part, director Malcolm D. Lee appears to have kept each and every improvised joke in the movie, which would go a long way to explaining how the thing runs almost two hours.

Anyway, with the store destroyed and his phony appearance of wealth in jeopardy, Teddy has to get his GED to be handed a cushy job from his best friend Marvin (Ben Schwartz). For that, he has to attend night class, which is taught by Carrie (Haddish), a teacher with a strict adherence to the belief that her students should actually learn.

By the way, Teddy and Carrie meet by chance before he enrolls in the class. The two insult each other quite viciously, but that immediate conflict is dismissed, because it just exists as a chance for the two actors to exchange bards. Also, the principal of the school is Teddy's old classmate Stewart (Taran Killam), who wants revenge for the time he showed his third nipple to the student body after Teddy teased him. The embarrassment, it seems, is entirely on Stewart, but obviously, the movie draws that conflict out as long as possible, until it's resolved with almost laughable ease.

The rest of the cast mostly plays Teddy's classmates, who are quirky in ways that make us think the characters were developed just before the cameras started rolling. Rob Riggle plays the dense guy. Mary Lynn Rajskub plays the awkward housewife who not-so-secretly resents her family. Romany Malco plays a conspiracy-minded guy who's weary of technology, and Al Madrigal plays a waiter, whom Teddy got fired (another conflict that disappears almost instantly) and whose accent is the core of all the jokes about him. The movie even puts in a few prison rape jokes in for good measure, since there's a student (played by Fat Joe) who participates in class via video chat while incarcerated.

There's more questionable humor, but when just about every joke in Night School doesn't work, there's really no point to calling attention to examples. The cast tries at least, but save for Hart, they don't even get a lousy screenwriting credit for their efforts.

Buy Related Products