‘Me Time’ Review: Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg Nearly Save Netflix’s Latest Almost-Movie
While Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Hart infuse some much-needed comedic levity in ‘Me Time’, its uninspired and unfunny plot makes the case that most Netflix movies aren’t meant to be actively watched.
In his review for The Man from Toronto, which starred Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson, critic Odie Henderson asserted the belief that “many Netflix films are created solely to be played in the background while viewers fold laundry or vacuum the cat hair off their IKEA furniture. You could walk away from [the movie] every ten minutes and not miss anything when you returned.” He’ll be happy to know that Netflix’s latest comedy, Me Time, which also stars Kevin Hart, is precisely that. No one will remember that they’ve watched the movie as soon as it ends because they’ve likely thought about wanting to do something other than sit through this mess during its 101 minutes.
There’s very little going for, save for two highly committed performances by Hart and Mark Wahlberg. They respectively play Sonny Fisher and Huck Dembo, once best friends who haven’t seen each other in three years. Sonny has matured as a stay-at-home dad and would rather take care of his children than spend a day hanging out with Huck at one of his birthday parties. However, after his wife (Regina Hall) encourages him to have some Me Time, he decides to go to Huck’s 44th birthday party, and things take a sharp left turn from there.
What’s most disappointing about this movie is that it could’ve worked. The talent is there (and Hart and Wahlberg have terrific chemistry together), and director John Hamburg has written some classic comedies throughout his career, which include Zoolander, Meet The Parents, Along Came Polly, and I Love You, Man. And yet none of it feels like a real movie. Now now, I understand that some may say right here, “dude expected this movie to be Ingmar Bergman when it’s just a light comedy.” To that, I say: if Me Time is your blueprint or gold standard for what a light comedy should aspire to be, then we’re in big trouble.
The movie doesn’t even look like a serious Hollywood production. The film opens with a wingsuit scene, with some of the most unfinished CGI I’ve seen in any movie this year. If you thought the visual effects of Thor: Love and Thunder were bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. And it gets especially worse during a scene where Sonny battles against an [obviously fake] mountain lion. Of course, no one is asking for Hart or a stunt double to be chased by a real animal, but wouldn’t it be nice if it looked real? Because it looks exactly like the type of creature you’d see in a film made by The Asylum, and not a major motion picture with two of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Were it not for Hart, Wahlberg, and fun supporting performances from Hall, Jimmy O. Yang, Luis Gerardo Méndez, John Amos, and, surprisingly, Seal, Me Time would’ve fallen completely flat. Most of the comedy is unbearably unfunny - it’s filled with the most lowbrow form of humor possible (farts, masturbation, defecation, you name it, it’s all there) and feels like it was written by a five-year-old who had just discovered potty humor and thinks he’s edgy by breaking the rules and saying things that shouldn’t be said. Some of the jokes work, but that’s only because the performances are great.
Hart has great comedic timing, and he’s perfectly in sync with whatever the hell Wahlberg is doing. The duo seemed to have a blast filming the movie, and it clearly shows, from their over-expressive antics to their physical comedy, which is top form. It’s a shame that their material is so tepid that you’ll immediately want to watch something else when the movie begins with the fake wingsuit scene.
It’s hard not to compare Netflix to The Cannon Group when they are the studio that releases the most inconsistent library of films. Some of them are stone-cold masterpieces (The Irishman, Marriage Story, Roma), while others are some of the most baffling concoctions ever “created” by an algorithm that pits top talent against some of the most tired and inane scripts imaginable. Me Time is another algorithmic-driven Netflix production that has released, will end up in the top 10 (potentially the most-streamed movie of the weekend on the platform), and then be immediately forgotten the following week, when Love in the Villa comes out. Now if that title doesn’t sound like a movie you’d find in one of those fake trailers from Saturday Night Live, nothing does.