'Night School' A Review

Night School is a comedy about Teddy(Kevin Hart) a high school drop out who is working overtime to present the image of a more successful wealthy person to his girlfriend loses his job and goes to get his GED at the titular Night School presided over by unorthodox but effective Carrie(Tiffany Haddish).

Haddish soars as the fast taking, sharp, demanding, ultimately nurturing teacher. She brings her natural high-wattage charisma, charm, and infectious humor to a role that is relatively flat on the page. The other members of the class- played by most notably Rob Riggle, Al Madrigal, Romany Malco, and Mary Lynn Rajskub- are all equally dimensional as characters and funny. Within the movie there's a really wonderful comedy hidden with this core group and Haddish. The biggest determent to the movie and it's least compelling aspect is Hart's character and his performance. The character is a throwback to a 90's trope that now feels so archaic, so unlikable, so irredeemable the inevitable "arc" the character goes through is not only unengaging it's preposterous. The role is either  out of Hart's range or as it's written it's impossible to pull off. With the success he's justly garnered over the past decade he seems to be continually funneled into these psuedo leading-man comedys(like Will Farrell and Eddie Murphy before him) which do not recognize or utilize his particular talents, and are above all mundane to the point of apathy. Contrast this performance with 2017's Jumanji where Hart is, essentially, playing a character within a character to great success there is no question of his ability and star-power but this is unquestionably a failure.

The runtime is a half hour overlong and while there is plenty of laughs the central story line is deeply flawed. The visual style and score are sufficient and modern but for comedys especially the story is of utmost importance and ultimately this one doesn't rise above decent.

Stream It.