A Less Impressive Film, but Kevin Hart and Malcolm Lee’s ‘Night School’ Sends a Message

For at least the moment, it’s fair to say that Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish are the two biggest comedians in the world. That couldn’t have been said a few years ago pre-Girls Trip for Haddish (also by director Malcolm Lee), and Hart had only recently achieved long overdue household-name status himself. Here we are though with the two most popular comedians in a movie together, and it serves something as an unintentional experiment in Hollywood movies. Would the two biggest stars of comedy create a great movie together? More important, does that matter? It seems the answer to those questions are the same: no. It would be a stretch to say that Night School is a great movie, or that it lives up to the position or potential that both Hart and Haddish bring. If you’ve seen previous Hart-starred films, you’ll notice the standard fare: a high school-aged Hart, a few slapstick-y moments, self-aware jabs on his height. Those all work to the degree you would expect. It’s the partnership of Hart and Haddish where Night School falls short, limited by the opportunities given by the story itself. The script does too much – has too much – and is full of an expansive cast that serves for both hilarity and Achilles heel at the same time.

The plot is straightforward enough at its bones: Night School is a story of second chances as Teddy (Hart) accidentally sabotages the career he built in sales. Since he never graduated high school, he’s hard pressed to land another opportunity fitting to w…