Kevin Hart- What Now
Onto the first actual movie I’ve seen this year. Which again, isn’t a movie, it’s really a stand-up show. But it was released in theatres and Halle Berry is in it and there was some semblance of a script in the first 10 minutes and the last 5 minutes so I guess this qualifies as a movie(?). All that is beside the point though. If it’s a movie, it’s an exceptionally bad movie. If it’s a stand-up show, it’s still a terrible stand-up show.
So, here’s the context. Kevin Hart somehow managed to fool 69,000 people into thinking he was funny and had talent and he filled up Lincoln Financial Field in Philly, his home town. That’s impressive. I won’t take away from that. He’s making a ton of money and that’s good for him. I just don’t think he’s very funny and not one minute from the 196 minutes I spent the other night watching this piece of filth made me feel otherwise. I really don’t know what there is to say about this. It starts with a non-sensical satire of Casino Royale with Kevin Hart playing Bond. Why? I really don’t know. Don Cheadle played the ‘Rival Spy’. If you’ve seen Oceans 11, you’ll know Don Cheadle as the guy with the terrible English accent. The joke writes itself. Have him do the terrible English accent! But no, that might have been funny and we definitely can’t have that in this movie. Some more poor satire follows and we somehow end up on stage and no reference is made to the first 15 minutes of the movie until it’s almost over. Maybe mention how he now has enough money to spend on vanity projects like this. That kind of self-referential comedy might actually be funny but again, that’s clearly not what they were going for here. Now, we’re at the stand-up portion bit. This is supposed to be his strong suit. The key word here is ‘supposed’.
It really is the blandest, safest, least imaginative stand-up show I’ve seen in a while. It’s not Dane Cook levels of bad but it’s still terrible. Especially if you make the mistake of comparing Hart to the greats like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chapelle, Pryor, Carlin, Louis CK et al. There’s nothing in his jokes that sets him apart and, this is really odd, him being rich now is a major detriment to his act. His jokes now revolve around him being rich and having things that are expensive and that’s just not something most people can relate too. And I don’t know how you make people laugh if you give them nothing to relate to. In fact, the jokes that got the best response were the jokes he had about his father being loud or the bit about disbelieving black women. But the good bits were few and far in between jokes of him on a yacht or his son who goes to a private school or his huge mansion with a huge driveway which happens to be dark. There are some instances where you feel like the situation is a goldmine of comedy but Kevin Hart just doesn’t delve deep into it. Another issue is pretty simple and one that can’t be blamed on him, the audience noise. The issue with having a stand-up show in a football stadium is that you can’t really feel the energy of an audience. That might seem odd since there are 69,000 people there but it’s true. It’s much easier to feel the energy of a room in a small Comedy Store than it is in a stadium. Plus, you can barely hear the audience unless you zoom in on a group of people and use that mic and that just sounds and looks weird as it does in this show multiple times. But there was one good thing to come out of that. There was one particular audience reaction when the camera zoomed in on an old black lady just shaking her head. Not an inkling of a smile on her face and the disappointment was palpable and for that moment, she was my spirit-animal. She was me. She was everyone watching the show and not finding anything funny about it. She was all of us.
I do have to hand it to the visuals in the screens behind Hart though. They were usually on point and looked stunning and I’m sure in the stadium, it looked pretty great. I don’t think stand-up shows need it and I really wasn’t thrilled by it and I don’t think it made the show better at all but at least it was there and looked pretty. Speaking of looking pretty, Halle Berry was in this and this was probably her best performance since Monster’s Ball. That’s really not saying much but she looked stunning and was sassy and I loved watching her. Hopefully there’s a Matthew Mcconaughey-esque career renaissance in the offing? Fingers crossed.
To surmise, I’d like to answer the question Kevin Hart put forth at the beginning of this, his magnum opus, ‘What Now?’ Take a step back. Go back to the comedy stores. Do what every other great comedian does. Just take a break. I’ll criticise Kevin Hart 6 days a week and twice on a Sunday but there are certain things I can’t take away from him. He is truly charismatic, full of energy and he can actually be funny. This just isn’t one of those times. I really hope the next Kevin Hart special will be far smaller than this. For me ideally, in front of an audience of 20 in a sweaty stand-up club in New Jersey. Filmed on a VHS tape, converted like 5 times and then finally released on YouTube. It could be Kevin Hart doing Kevin Hart things for 60 minutes while the audience gets progressively drunker and I guarantee it’d still be funnier than this at the very least.
