DIRECTOR: John Hamburg
CAST: Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg, Regina Hall, Jimmy O. Yang, Tahj Mowry, Carlo Rota, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Michelle DeShon, Melanie Minichino, Deborah S. Craig, Chau Long, Thomas Ochoa, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Kieran Roberts
RUNNING TIME: 101 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: When his family goes away, an overworked father (Hart) calls upon his former friend (Wahlberg) for some fun…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Netflix has had (and continues to have) a pretty rough year, and there’s plenty of reasons why that is, from the dwindling subscriber count thanks in part to the current cost of living crisis, to its much-dreaded plan to introduce ad-supported tiers to recoup some of its costs. The biggest reason why, though, lies in its overwhelmingly lacklustre exclusive content; the streamer keeps spending hundreds of millions of dollars on high concept after high concept, attracting some of the industry’s biggest actors and filmmakers, and yet most of them come out as some of the most forgettable, mediocre-at-best wastes you can imagine. Red Notice previously met this fate, as did The Gray Man, The Adam Project, The Bubble, (and when it can be unironically stated that the Adam Sandler/Happy Madison offering Hustle is legitimately better than all of those movies combined, you know that the situation is pretty dire), and now Me Time emerges to remind us all that Netflix’s original content needs serious reworking, and fast.
A completely laugh-free “comedy” featuring talented comedic actors making absolute fools of themselves, but not in any way that indicates fun or even ironic enjoyment, director John Hamburg’s Me Time is the epitome of bad Netflix comedies, specifically the kind that relies so much on familiar plot beats and juvenile gross-out humour that it forgets to also be funny or endearing. That isn’t even beginning to get into the overly sitcom-like jokes and dialogue that would make a casual Fuller House viewer groan, or the endless parade of random, largely inconsequential set pieces which are the only times you can see where Netflix put all of its money (and then, apparently, set it all on fire à la the Joker in The Dark Knight).
Me Time is about a guy named Sonny (Kevin Hart), a stay-at-home dad who has very little life outside of raising his kids and heading the local PTA, while his architect wife Maya (Regina Hall) is the family breadwinner. When Sonny realises that he’s missing out on his own life, and with Maya wanting to connect more with her own children, she decides to take them away on spring break while he has the house all to himself for a few days. Free to have some fun, Sonny decides to reunite with his old friend Huck (Mark Wahlberg) for his extravagant birthday party, only – of course – to run into a number of outrageous scenarios along the way, mainly involving turtles, loan sharks, and for whatever reason music legend Seal.
This is the kind of comedy that telegraphs each and every one of its jokes, as if to ensure that the intended punchline falls flatter than the world’s lamest pancake. The opening minutes alone are an exercise in comedic predictability: a brief prologue sees Hart wincing out of Wahlberg’s planned wingsuit dive off a poorly green-screened cliff, while in the background a helicopter is about to take off as Hart, still wearing his wingsuit, waves it down. Do you even need me to tell you what happens next? The fact that I shouldn’t is exactly the point; Me Time always holds the viewer’s hand, letting them know exactly what the joke is going to be, how it’s being set up, and how it’s all going to eventually end. Not once is there ever a sense of spontaneity, as it plays it so safe that you wonder why they even bothered to give this an adult rating, because grown audiences certainly aren’t going to enjoy this, and the ones that probably will the most aren’t even old enough to watch it.
It barely has much structure to it, going from one outlandish set-piece to the next without attempting to connect them all together, whether it’s a desert party with a giant Mark Wahlberg-shaped effigy, or a scene with a run-over tortoise that ends with Kevin Hart performing CPR on it by blowing into its snot-filled nostrils. There will also be sub-plots that are introduced and just as quickly discarded, like one about Jimmy O. Yang as the world’s least intimidating loan shark which is resolved so fast that you barely feel like there’s been any conflict whatsoever, and by the time there should be it’s already moved on to the next unfunny plot point. It flip-flops so hard from one random thing to another that it quickly loses focus, and because it’s never funny you’re sitting there feeling mostly bored by its awkward desperation to entertain its audience while it figures out what direction it seeks to go in. It’s a waste of time for the viewer, as well as the actors who, in fairness, look like they’re having a little bit of fun here (especially Mark Wahlberg, who is basically playing an even less mature version of his character from Ted), but are given nothing else to do other than engage in long, extended riff sessions where you can tell they’re trying as hard as they can to squeeze some laughs out of this DOA script.
Honestly, it shouldn’t surprise me that Me Time turned out to be really, really bad, because that’s just the way that Netflix churns out its own material nowadays. Like I said earlier, it will spend however much money on movies that have the most generic, unambitious scripts that the bigger studios undoubtedly passed on, and will then try to save face by hiring some of Hollywood’s top talent for these projects so that people will be interested in queuing them up. Seriously, would anyone have been interested in this film is Kevin Hart and/or Mark Wahlberg weren’t signed on to it? It’s unlikely, but even with them on board it doesn’t automatically make the project any better. If anything, it’s even more embarrassing to see these very talented actors be reduced to strutting around naked for no reason, or get mauled by horribly CGI mountain lions; on that note, if there’s one film out there right now starring a popular Black actor facing off against a lion, for the love of God go to a cinema and watch Beast instead of staying home and watching this dreck.
It’s little wonder that Netflix is sinking fast, and if there’s more content like Me Time on the horizon, then the once-mighty streamer should start saying its prayers.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Me Time is an entirely laugh-free grind of a comedy that wastes talented comedic actors like Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg in an awkwardly random script that flip-flops from one unfunny set-piece to the next, without any sense of surprise or even fun.
