Film Review - Night School (12A)

If you're not gonna do the work, drop the class.

Kevin Hart - funny guy. Fast-talking, pushy, appealingly vulnerable. Tiffany Haddish - funny girl. Bolshy, rude, full of attitude. Put them together, give them a decent screenplay to work with and watch them tear it up (so to speak). So, does Night School provide them with said screenplay? Because that's all it had to do. Damn, I wish I could tell you yes...

Hart plays Teddy Walker, a High School drop-out whose talent for hustling has landed him a lucrative sales job and a classy girlfriend. Then a drastic change in circumstance leaves him in need of a high-paying new job, one he can only attain with a GED (General Education Diploma - the UK equivalent would be five subject passes at GCSE). So back he goes to his old school, where his teen nemesis is now Principal, and his teacher is the take-no-crap Carrie (Haddish) - a woman who, he rapidly learns, doesn't suffer fools. His classmates are a disparate bunch of adult-learners, each with their own reason for seeking the qualification. And so the scene is set for an amiable and heart-warming ensemble comedy.

What's frustrating is how close the film comes to achieving that, before ultimately failing. Hart establishes his character with that likeable motor-mouth shtick, the set-up is dealt with neatly and there's a nice comedic chemistry brewing between him and Haddish. The story is populated with talented character actors too, like SNL alumnus Taran Killam as the vindictive Principal Stewart. Teddy's new classmates are a sporadically entertaining ragtag bunch; stand-outs are Romany Malco as technophobic conspiracy theorist Jaylen and Mary Lynn Rajskub (24's prickly computer-genius Chloe) as harassed stay-at-home mom Theresa. The extended scene where Haddish meets her new students is genuinely amusing - possibly because the actors were given scope to ply their improv skills.

And then the funny kind of dried up for me. The characters proved thin as rice-paper, with the cast working it hard to try and keep them entertaining. A genuinely promising classroom dynamic was sidelined in favour of broad slapstick escapades and gross-out humour, so that the whole 'Educating Teddy' aspect was minimised - and that was supposedly the point of the movie! Even when the story commendably brings up the whole theme of learning difficulties, it deals with them in the most shallow, least insightful way possible - a sad waste of an opportunity. It is possible to achieve laugh-out-loud responses while tackling serious issues. But for that you need a script that's written smartly enough to make good on its basic premise.

There's a growing list of 2018 mainstream comedy releases that fall disappointingly flat - this is just the latest. Like I Feel Pretty and The Happytime Murders before it, Night School fails to supply consistent laughs (to me at any rate) and fizzles out of storytelling juice long before the end-credits. That its first act promises something genuinely entertaining only adds to the disappointment. Like the career of a talented but lazy student, this is a story of hopelessly squandered potential.

Gut Reaction: Ten minutes' worth of chuckling (that's ten more than during The Spy Who Dumped Me admittedly). Then a wander through the comedy wasteland with some moments of genuine cringe.

Where Are the Women?: Present and as well-drawn as the men (i.e. not very). The gender politics are fairly progressive, which sadly doesn't add to the laugh quotient.

Ed's Verdict: 5.5/10. A further reminder were one needed (hint to US movie industry - it seriously wasn't) that comic talent needs back-up from decent writing. What could easily have achieved a B+ barely scrapes a pass.