It's almost impressive how Kevin Hart has managed to move from mediocrity to painfully unfunny in an attempt to keep cashing the streaming service paychecks. I have often gone for his movies as an easy choice for a weekend distraction, and they used to work in a very basic way, but now I'll just keep associating him with absolute awfulness. Because even many Kevin Hart fans will tell you how bad this is.
Hart plays Joe, an advertising exec trying to land a big contract with a vodka company. He has his life together, in many ways, but also hasn't given full commitment to his partner, Jennifer (Teyana Taylor), or his own career ambition. And he might be in trouble. His latest pitch hasn't gone down well, with many thinking that he's now too old to figure out how to make ads appeal to the younger generation. Thankfully, he ends up accidentally added to a WhatsApp group chat between four young guys out to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of their friend, Mason (Mason Gooding). After initially having a bit of fun with them, Joe offers to fund most of their trip in exchange for spending some time with them. The guys think that Joe just wants to party, which is partly true, but Joe is also aiming to get an insight, and some covertly-filmed footage, to help him in his job. He's certainly not aiming to cross paths with a dangerous drug dealer (Jaze, played by Michael Mando).
Tim Story is the director here. While rarely one of my favourites, he's been delivering moderately enjoyable fare for a few decades now. You wouldn't know that from watching this. Both the direction and the screenplay, written by four different people, ends up relying far too much on the star power of Hart, putting him in a variety of situations where he can do his usual mix of mugging, insults, and nervousness.
Things wouldn't be so bad if Hart was surrounded by some top-tier talent. He's not. That isn't to say that those playing the younger characters (Gooding, Marcello Hernández, Kam Patterson, and Ben Marshall) are bad. Gooding continues to be an easy onscreen presence to like, and the other three work well enough with the material they're given, but they're not up to the task of pushing one another in ways that could have turned weak material into something more amusing and entertaining. Mando does well in another role he could play in his sleep by now, Taylor is woefully underused, considering the caché she has right now, and there's not much added from the likes of Zach Cherry, Kevin Dunn, and Andy Garcia in supporting roles. It's actually another Garcia (Anna, no relation to Andy) who rises above the predictable and tired plotting to provide a couple of welcome extra laughs.
Connections are made, life lessons are learned, and things look at their bleakest before taking an upturn during the third act. You know this is going to happen from the start. Not only does the film provide no surprises, not a one, but it presents itself as if it has been created by people who believe they are doing something genuinely good. Which makes it even more saddening and infuriating. If I could at least see someone struggling to hide their pain then I would have hope. I don't, and I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually got something like Another 72 Hours in the next year or two.
3/10
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