If you’re a fan of Kevin Hart – most famous for starring alongside Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in Central Intelligence and Ice Cube in Ride Along’, then you can’t go wrong with his latest comedy caper Night School.
Playing high school dropout Teddy Walker, Hart meets his comedy match in Tiffany Haddish (who delivered a star turn in Girls Trip last year) as underpaid stressed out teacher Carrie.
Together they make a great duo: combining effortlessly funny timing with sharp, witty one liners as Teddy struggles to get his GED (General Educational Development) qualification: “I’ve got learning herpes!” is among Hart’s standout quips as Teddy who, whilst making ends meet promoting fast food chain Christian Chicken from the side of the street, learns that he’s dyslexic.
Haddish, playing tough teacher Carrie, pulls no punches (quite literally) in trying to improve his focus and attention span, beating the square root of 81 out of him whilst in a mixed martial arts match. Even his dad questions whether Teddy is “just dumb.”
The plot takes a heist movie turn, though, when Teddy and his accompanying group of flunking students jump roofs in an attempt to steal the answers for the mid-term test from the office of the school principal Stewart (Taran Killam) - who lacks confidence having been bullied whilst at high school for having a third nipple.
The other adult students are equally as funny, with their own background sob stories: Mackenzie (Rob Riggle) is great as a jock-like pushy dad who’s trying to get the qualification to stop his son from staying a college dropout; Mila (Anne Winters) - who sits Instagramming at the back chewing gum - needs it to get out of juvenile detention; Theresa (Mary Lynn Rajskub) delivers an empathetic performance as a stay-at-home mum in a loveless marriage who hates her children but constantly insists she lives a ‘blessed life’; Jaylen (Romany Malco) ‘stays woke’ whilst paranoid that the Illuminati are everywhere; and Luis (Al Madrigal) is an aspiring Mexican singer fired from his waiter job after a suspected pubic hair is found in one of the cheesecake’s he serves…
Except for Hart’s inevitably cheesy graduation speech as Teddy, thanking everyone for believing in him despite having “a boatload of learning disabilities”, Night School is a funny, watchable story of self acceptance, dedication and the importance of not giving up.
Night School is now showing at the Light Cinema in Wisbech. For screening dates, times and tickets visit www.wisbech.lightcinemas.co.uk/night-school
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