Series of disjointed sketches that mostly fail
Film’s six writers, including Kevin Hart, tell a lot of jokes but result is disjointed
Night School
(out of 4) Starring Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Al Madrigal, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rob Riggle, Romany Malco, Anne Winters, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Taran Killam, Keith David and Loretta Devine. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 112 minutes. PG
Night School appears to have been the result of a back-of-the-envelope calculation: Tiffany Haddish + Kevin Hart + Girls Trip director Malcolm D. Lee = comedy gold.
The equation doesn’t add up. The movie has a few laughs, but it’s more like comedy tin. Another pesky figure explains why: Night School was written by six people. This is a problem that Haddish’s math-teacher character Carrie might have addressed in her evening class, which includes high-school dropout Teddy, played by Hart.
More is generally less when it comes to screenplays. You can only subdivide an idea so much before it becomes a series of random bursts.
(I say “generally” because the assertion isn’t always true: Casablanca also had six writers.)
Night School’s sextet of writers, Hart being one of them, have a lot of individual jokes they want to tell. But nothing really adds up to a whole story and there’s nothing they want to say.
A “meet nasty” between Carrie and Teddy near the top of the picture illustrates the dilemma. The two pull up at a stoplight, driving separate convertibles, on an Atlanta street, and for no particular reason start trading insults. They end up making faces and growling at each other.
At this point, Carrie doesn’t know that she’ll soon be attempting to impart knowledge to Teddy, who is revealed in a 2001 prologue to be not just a bad student but an impossible one. He disdainfully abandons school midway through a final exam, vowing that he’s going to study at the “school of life” rather than work for the GED (General Educational
Development) certificate needed to graduate.
Seventeen years later, he seems to be doing all right for himself: driving a Porsche, dating his classy fiancée-to-be Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and picking up big restaurant tabs.
But it’s all an act: Teddy is just a seller (albeit a really good one) of barbecue grills, and he’s heavily in debt. A couple of bad turns later, including a fire at his BBQ store caused by his own clumsiness, he finds himself secretly trying to get his GED at night school to reboot his life.
Lisa can’t know what he’s up to, because Teddy is afraid she’ll dump him, although there’s nothing about her character to suggest this would happen.
This puts him under the command of Carrie, who sees right through his BS and calls him out as a “loudmouth hustler,” although she also becomes aware that he has multiple learning disabilities. She’s gentle compared to the racist school principal, Stewart (Taran Killam), who envied Teddy as a schoolmate way back when and who is now determined to see him fail.
Teddy’s fellow students are a veritable Breakfast Club of misfits, among them Mary Lynn Rajskub as a harried mom feigning contentment, Al Madrigal as a vengeful ex-waiter and wannabe pop star and comedian Fat Joe as an orange-jumpsuit convict who is attending the class via Skype.
These characters and others liven up bits of Night School, but neither Lee nor his screenwriting committee seem to want to do much apart from string together a series of disjointed sketches, including an absurd interlude where Carrie beats on Teddy in an MMA cage match to teach him how to “focus.”
The worst thing about Night School is that everybody is given their own personal epiphany, like students getting participation medals in a classroom where nobody fails because excellence isn’t the object of the lesson.