Night School misses the marks
Night School (M, 111 mins) Directed by Malcolm D Lee Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett★★
Isaw two trailers before Night School rolled onto the screen, in a theatre that was completely empty except for Mrs Tuckett’s boy Graeme.
One trailer was for the reboot of Halloween and the other was for yet another Robin Hood. And that turned out to be pretty appropriate, since Night School really is not much more than an uncredited remake of the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back To School. But nothing like as good.
Kevin Hart is Teddy. He’s a successful salesman, but living way beyond his credit limit as he tries to maintain a facade of wealth to impress girlfriend Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke).
An explosion at Teddy’s workplace blows his deceit to bits, and by a couple of contrivances too daft to contemplate, Teddy decides to go back to school – night school – to earn the high school diploma he didn’t bother with first time around.
What follows is an embarrassingly boiler plate series of loosely edited together scenes of Teddy, his drearily ‘‘wacky’’ class mates, his sassy and hard-driving teacher and sundry other cliches of every high-school comedy ever made, filling out the running time until the inevitable triumphal graduation speech.
Which – in the ultimate nonspoiler – is shown in the trailer.
A few lessons about recognising learning disabilities in troubled kids are a welcome addition, but feel tacked on for brownie points rather than anything the filmmakers really cared about.
Night School only fitfully comes to life in the scenes between Hart and Tiffany Haddish who, after her break-through in Girls Trip, could have expected a far better project than this as her next outing.
Night School reunites Haddish with Girls Trip director Malcolm D Lee, but in the service of a far inferior script. Night School is credited to six writers, but I’m struggling to see how any of them justified their invoices.
Romany Malco (Last Vegas) single-handedly takes a couple of scenes into a low orbit, but they are over too soon and never really connect with the meagre narrative.
Night School might just be enough for a lazy Friday night if you’re happy to set the bar somewhere damn near subterranean. But if you’ve seen the trailer, you have already heard the only funny lines in the film. If you want to pay money to watch the interminable minutes between them, then knock yourself out.