Night School | Little White Lies

Night School

27 Sep 2018 / Released: 28 Sep 2018

Words by Catherine Pearson

Directed by Malcolm D Lee

Starring Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish

Two adults, a woman and a man, conversing at a desk in a classroom setting.
Two adults, a woman and a man, conversing at a desk in a classroom setting.
1

Anticipation.

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a film by its poster...

3

Enjoyment.

Laughed a lot more than I expected to.

2

In Retrospect.

Turn-your-brain-off fare, and not exactly thrilled about the presentation of the female characters.

Kevin Hart’s nat­ur­al charis­ma brings some feel-good laughs to this uneven but polit­i­cal­ly aware comedy.

Hot on the heels of his 2017 suc­cess Girls Trip, direc­tor Mal­colm D Lee once again pairs up with pro­duc­er Will Pack­er for this return-to-high school romp. Kevin Hart plays high school drop-out Ted­dy Walk­er, and the come­di­an and actor’s influ­ence is all over the film hav­ing co-pro­duced it and also co-writ­ten the script. For all of its shaky moments, this vehi­cle has a sea­soned dri­ver at the wheel.

We first meet Ted­dy in his teenage years as he sits a test for his high school diplo­ma. Over­whelmed, he gets up and makes a defi­ant speech about refus­ing to be a sheep before storm­ing out of the exam hall. Years lat­er, Ted­dy rolls along the road in a flashy con­vert­ible next to his girl­friend Lisa (Mega­lyn Echikun­woke). It appears he didn’t need that diplo­ma to make a suc­cess of him­self. He’s a ser­i­al employ­ee of the month at Joe’s BBQ City, rak­ing in the com­mis­sion – but with a work­place full of propane gas can­is­ters it’s easy to imag­ine how the some­what bum­bling Ted­dy finds him­self in need of a new job.

Teddy’s friend Mar­vin (Ben Schwartz) promis­es to fix him up with a job as a finan­cial ana­lyst (because that doesn’t take years of study­ing, sure­ly) on the basis that he secures the job’s only require­ment: his high school GED. Ted­dy vows to attend the night school at his old high school to final­ly achieve his high school diplo­ma, keep­ing his new stu­dent life a secret from his girl­friend and meet­ing an eclec­tic bunch of adult learn­ers who all have the same goal.

The film’s poster has that clas­sic 90s fold-your-arms-and-lean pose, and indeed it feels like a time­worn sto­ry that’s been dust­ed off and giv­en a 2018 makeover. While fel­low night school­er Jaylin (the bril­liant and under­used Romany Mal­co) is afraid of the mod­ern world’s rapid­ly advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy (“I first got woke when I saw Ter­mi­na­tor”), Ted­dy is con­scious of the polit­i­cal cli­mate. He’s will­ing to make mon­ey any way he can while study­ing but wear­ing a chick­en suit and spin­ning an advert for a fast food fran­chise doesn’t sit right with him. The film rais­es stereo­types and uses them to com­ic effect, but the seri­ous points under­ly­ing the gags don’t go unnoticed.

The black voice’ is a recur­ring source of humour as the eye-rolling, tough love-advo­cat­ing night school teacher Car­rie (Tiffany Had­dish) despairs at the white principle’s (Taran Kil­lam) attempts at sound­ing like a woke’ African-Amer­i­can. Night School is con­cerned with mak­ing you laugh, so it’s left up to the view­er to decide if there’s a more seri­ous state­ment being made here.

The film’s strongest scene involves the night school group first intro­duc­ing them­selves, so it’s a shame when the plot lurch­es in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion that takes the char­ac­ters out of the class­room. There’s also some lazy over-sex­u­al­is­ing of the female cast. Anne Win­ters’ Mila wears an unnec­es­sar­i­ly busty ensem­ble in one scene, while Mary Lynn Rajskub’s There­sa talks exten­sive­ly about anal sex for no appar­ent rea­son. Teddy’s girl­friend Lisa, mean­while, waits at home in her lacy under­wear for her man’s return. So maybe we’re not entire­ly in 2018 yet.

You might like