Hot on the heels of Girls Trip’s success, director Malcolm D. Lee re-teams with that film’s breakout star Tiffany Haddish for this intermittently humorous but largely messy comedy twofer. Night School could have been a great vehicle for an established comedic powerhouse like Kevin Hart to meld styles with a burgeoning icon like Haddish, but instead, it’s a too-many-cooks approach to semi-improvisational comedy that can’t congeal multiple visions into a cohesive whole.
A very simple premise starts off this well-intentioned film. Hart plays Teddy Walker, a clever and charismatic man who has never been book smart. He dropped out of high school after being flummoxed by a standardized test and has essentially bullshitted his way through life by talking fast and being very convincing. When a proposal to his longtime girlfriend Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke) goes awry and he ends up blowing up the barbecue store where he works, Teddy has to get his GED in order to secure a job that will help him hold on to a woman who is out of his league.
Looking for a shortcut, he has to rule out manipulating the principal, who happens to be Stewart (Taran Killam), a Lean on Me-obsessed nerd he bullied as a teen. And Carrie (Haddish), the night school teacher, turns out to be a woman Teddy was rude to on the way to school. His class is full of lovable misfits, among them a waiter he got fired in an attempt to avoid paying a check and revealing his poor financial standing to Lisa.
Every element of the set-up is perfectly poised for a movie about a particular kind of growth, with Teddy having to learn to be honest with people, beginning with himself, so he doesn’t have to lie and double talk so much to keep up appearances. The problem is that, with six credited screenwriters, that very simple throughline was probably a key element in one of multiple drafts of this project. But with each pass, each new writer and each casting decision, other contradictory storytelling aims get thrown into the mix, resulting in a film trying to juggle several different directions and tones and failing miserably.
Comedy, especially in film, functions best with a kind of narrative clarity this movie just doesn’t possess. Instead of a straightforward story focusing on Teddy, Night School feels more like an overlong pilot for a patchwork ensemble piece that is too shoddy to last a whole season, even on some third rate streaming platform.
Talented, proven improv-capable performers like Rob Riggle and Mary Lynn Rajskub fill out thankless roles as Teddy’s classmates, but even their brightest moments are undermined by poor editing and an inability on director Lee’s part to pare lengthy exchanges of off the cuff banter into digestible chunks. No other mainstream comedy in recent memory has made it to the multiplex with this much fat on the bone. Scenes start too early and last far too long, with even the funniest jokes stretched out to the point of absurdity.
Haddish avails herself well, not ruining the momentum she’s built up in the past year, but it’s clear her role was initially written for a Rashida Jones-esque straight woman, so her quirky chemistry with Hart derails simple elements of the narrative. It’s bad to the point that late in the second act, they have to reveal her character is a lesbian to hold off any potential romance that would get in the way of the film’s goals. This isn’t clever representation–it’s just shoddy screenwriting.
But Hart is the real problem. The film begins with him as a likable, sharp guy who just doesn’t function well within the public education system. It’s a legitimate opportunity to explore vital issues in American schools and how the black community sometimes struggles to identify and support youths with learning disabilities. It could affirm the acquisition of knowledge for everyday life versus the accumulation of textbook factoids and bullshit curriculums that don’t prepare kids for adult life.
Instead, the relatable everyman Hart plays in the film’s opening devolves into legitimately the stupidest fucking person to ever live. He’s like a black Pauly Shore playing Homer Simpson, going from a genuinely three dimensional human with idiosyncrasy to a detestable cartoon character who grates more than he engenders sympathy. It’s a borderline insulting creative choice that negates any of the film’s more sincere observations about adult learners and the depressingly toxic relationship between diplomas and financial solvency.
To some, Night School may seem like another run of the mill mainstream comedy failing to stick the landing, but it’s a genuine tragedy, given the sheer amount of talent on screen and the rich potential of its premise and subject matter. There’s still plenty of laughs and it’s not an absolute waste of time, but it could have been something really special. Nothing is worse than wasted potential.
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