Night School (Review)

Night School Could Use Some Classes on Comedy.

Night School might not be the worst movie of the year, but it comes dangerously close at times. While the film has plenty of funny moments there are some horrific technical mistakes that can be seen throughout it. Most of these are because Night School was very clearly changed from an R-rated film to PG-13 after principal shooting was done and there are some terrible dubs that come into play because of that. To make things even more awkward, Kevin Hart is the least funny part of this film. Despite all of these issues though, I will admit that I laughed out loud at a number of scenes in Night School, the question is if those laughs were worth the rest of the film.

There are a lot of disappointing aspects to Night School. The premise itself is fairly promising. An eclectic group of weirdos taking night school classes in order to earn their GED’s. Stars Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart have a pretty solid cast backing them up with the likes of Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rob Riggle, and Ben Schwartz. All of whom are accomplished comedians who bring a certain bit of charm to each of their respective roles. The thing is that none of them really have much to work with and most of the characters are one trick ponies. While a few of the actors manage to make the most of the lemons they’re given, most of them are only good for one or two jokes before they start getting old.

While I haven’t enjoyed all of Kevin Hart’s movies in the past as much as others, but I do like him as a comedian. The same can be said about Haddish who was in one of my favorite comedies from the summer and has had a pretty meteoric rise over the past year or so in general. The thing is that Night School doesn’t show them at their best, but only gives them what’s safe to work with. Hart plays a student who manages to work in plenty of his high pitched overwhelmed rants that he goes on repeatedly throughout the film and Haddish is a teacher has plenty of “tude” that she gets to throw around at various other characters. The thing is that it all feels like we’ve seen them both do this dance before, which is a shame because they seem like such a solid comedic duo on paper. Then again a lot of things about Night School probably seemed solid on paper, but it suffers from a lot of problems that I’ve seen time and time again this year.

First up we need to talk about the fact that there are six credited writers who worked on Night School. One is good, two is a pretty good duo, and three means someone came in to clean stuff up a bit. Six though means too many cooks in the kitchen and that probably explains why the comedy is so scattershot throughout it. A lot of the jokes land, but the style of comedy is incredibly inconsistent. For example, it goes from blowing Hart up to forcing him to do learning by fighting Haddish in MMA matches to jokes about crippling loneliness from being in a loveless marriage. Instead of picking a lane, Night School swerves drunkenly across all of them hoping to find something that works. What confuses me is that it should not have had to do this. Just two hours of Hart and Haddish ripping on each other would have been well worth the price of admission, so how could it all go so wrong?

Well, that’s where director Malcolm D. Lee comes in who you might know from such gems as Undercover Brother, Barbershop: The Next Cut, and Scary Movie… 5. He’s a comedic director who is not known for making very funny movies. Of them, all though Night School is probably his opus (which isn’t saying a lot for either of them). With the ingredients, he had thought it this should have been a truly great comedy. I think directors like him would benefit greatly from really examining the rules of comedy not to be like everyone else, but because it would help him with his timing, delivery, and overall awareness of execution.

Despite the bar for Kevin Hart comedies being set so low, (see Ride Along and Get Hard) Night School is underwhelming. Though I don’t think the blame rests solely on Lee’s shoulders. As I said earlier, it’s very clear that the studio stepped into neuter this movie from a solid (and probably much funnier) R-rating to PG-13. The only hope for this film is that it gets an unrated cut when it comes out on video. I’ll probably be interested in seeing what could have been, but as far as what is, you could do better than Night School. Hell, Night School could have done better than “Night School.”