I was in MN last week! Hence the hiatus. No time to write, and fell a bit behind on movies. But I _finally_ got to go to Mall of America! And really, I got to spend some time with my Daddy’s side of the family, which was pretty awesome and long overdue (Hi, Uncle Phil!) But yeah now, I’ve gotta play catch up, which is further complicated by the fact that I’m fairly sure I’ve got computer vision syndrome, and my eyes are rebelling as I try and look at the screen (don’t worry, doc appt already scheduled). Let’s see how much I can avoid looking at the screen while I type (and I’ve already once caught the cursor jumped to the wrong spot).
On the eve of the trip, I went with some of the Stardust crew to see Night School. We shoulda gone to Smallfoot instead.
Kevin Hart, playing every Kevin Hart character ever, decides that it’s finally time for him to get his GED because reasons. That means night school, where his teacher is Tiffany Haddish. Hilarity ensues, or at least tries to and kinda fails at it.
I adore Tiffany, and she’s the only reason I had any interest in this (besides the fact that the movie was picked for me that night). She was a bit more subdued than usual, but it worked. I absolutely loved her character. She was fierce with a heart of gold and a sense of confidence and compassion that is beautiful to see in a female character. Except there wasn’t nearly enough of her. The promo for the movie would lead you to believe her screen time is split pretty even with Kevin. Their screentime is more like 3:1 in his favor, and the movie suffered for it.
I also rather liked the supporting characters, but I feel like their potential was quandered. Rob Riggle, Mary Lyn Rajskub, and some others who I didn’t recognize but grew fond of despite how cliche their storypoints were. Sign of a great cast that I still liked them, even if I didn’t like anything they did (does that even make sense).
But there was one other major problem with the movie–the editing. Now I say this knowing almost nothing about editing. I can sometimes notice really really good editing, and apparently I can also sometimes notice really really bad editing. Things happened twice in a row, scenes had awkward lead ins, lips didn’t match words. It was beyond distracting, and further dragged down a movie that was already mediocre at best.
This is def not a see it in theaters movie. It’s barely a see it on Netflix. Actually yeah, stream it, and take care of your chores during Kevin Hart’s scenes. It’ll be your most productive cleaning binge in a while.
Night School – \m/ \m/