NIGHT SCHOOL: A Dull, Uninspired Comedy

Kevin Hart is back on the big screen in Night School, and this time, he plays Teddy Walker, a barbeque salesman who stands to inherit the business from his boss, a well-meaning older guy. Things are going well—he proposes to his girlfriend, who agrees to marry him, up until a dramatic event upturns his life, and he can no longer inherit said business. Here’s the problem: his girlfriend thinks, much like her, he’s a wealthy businessman who drives an expensive car and lives a high-flying lifestyle. To keep up appearances, he ends up going back to night school to get his GED.

There, he meets Tiffany Haddish’s Carrie, the teacher of said GED class, and a bunch of misfits—one who is there instead of juvenile hall, another who’s a conspiracy theorist, and one a former chef at a restaurant who was insulted by Teddy in a restaurant.

A classic set-up gone wrong

It’s odd, and unfortunate that the film doesn’t work particularly well. It’s a classic comedy set-up, and one that Hart won’t be all that unfamiliar with (see: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Central Intelligence). Night School is the worst of those three by quite some distance.

Nick Stoller, the film’s primary writer, has worked on a lot of comedies in the past, some more successful than others. The most notable of those is Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but he also worked on 2011’s The Muppets, and two of the recent LEGO movies. Unfortunately, none of the style and verve of those films is present in Night School.

Talented cast, poor script

It’s quite difficult to talk about the artistic aspects of Night School because, honestly, there isn’t a whole lot of artistry present. I’m not talking about the artistic style of cinematography you’d see in a low-budget arthouse movie, but the clever visual gags of films like this year’s comedy highlight, Game Night. There are moments in which Night School reaches for those heights, but it falls short pretty much every time, and a lot of those moments are paired with some very limp one-liners.

The cast (particularly Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish) do their best with the material, but at best, it can only be described as sporadically funny. It’s surprising how little of the comedy falls into their collective wheelhouse, too. Hart is primarily a physical comedian, but his talents are never used to good effect. On top of that, the story feels very rote, and you can predict how exactly it will play out within the first twenty minutes of it starting.

But the oddest thing about Night School is how few jokes there actually are, and a lot of them are repeated very frequently. There was plenty of room for development, but the supporting cast in the film are very one-note, and the film wouldn’t have changed much if they all disappeared halfway through.

The story is very thin on the ground. You can pretty much tell where it’s going to go from the opening scene. If someone has a dilemma, it will be solved by the time the credits role. The exact same principle applies to any potential romances, friendships, or philosophical conflicts between characters. Everything is wrapped up neatly, and because there are no surprises, it makes it very difficult to get invested in the characters, which is where most comedies of this kind fail. Quite often, a lot of the humour and emotional comedy stems from the likeability of its characters, and the ones here are far too one-dimensional for any of that to happen.

Very little of the narrative makes dramatic sense. A will-they-wont-they relationship forms between Haddish and Hart’s characters, but it’s something which very much seemed foisted in to pad the film out slightly and add some tension towards the end, but it seems to come completely out of the blue. It was very hard to remain invested by the time it arrives there.

Night School: Conclusion

Ultimately, Night School’s biggest crime is how bland it is. It’s difficult to care about anything that happens, because the jokes are so flat, the characters so dull. There isn’t really much more to say about the film. Even the most ardent Kevin Hart fans would be wise to give this one a miss.

What did you think of Night School? Let us know in the comments.