★★ (2 out of 4)
A while back I was interviewing Kevin Hart at a small studio at ABC News. He sweetly kept trying to make me laugh. I kept smiling. But that wasn’t enough. “Hey, this is my A material,” Hart said, jokingly miffed but missing the roar of the crowd he gets at his sold-out solo concerts. He was giving out but I wasn’t giving back, at least not enough.
I kept thinking about that moment while watching “72 Hours,” the latest in Hart’s long line of threadbare, throwaway comedies. You can’t see it in theaters where the crowds are or where they used to be. “72 Hours” is a Netflix movie, which means you’ll be streaming it at home alone or just with friends and family. Hart won’t hear you laughing, but you can still see him straining for the big whoops, which are at best intermittent, if I’m being kind.
I wrongly thought “72 Hours” might be a sequel to the cop caper “48HRS,” which marked Eddie Murphy’s electric 1982 film debut. Murphy also knows from squandering his very real talent on B-movie junk (hello, “Norbit”). But by the time Murphy was 47, Hart’s age now, he had starred in “48HRS,” “Trading Places,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Coming to America,” hit his comic peak in “The Nutty Professor” and won an Oscar nomination for “Dreamgirls.” Comparisons are odious, but Hart’s best, in 2017’s The Upside,” never got near the Oscars or box office glory.
There’s still time, of course. But the “Ride Along” career course Hart is following sounds like the bottom-shelf audience pandering that occupies Murphy, 65, in his AARP years.
The latest in Kevin Hart’s long line of threadbare, throwaway comedies
“72 Hours” is unlikely to reverse Hart’s downward trajectory. Murphy’s Joe Nixon is an ad man whose bosses need him to connect to Gen Z. His orders are: sell vodka to these party animals or get shitcanned. He first ad attempts are cringey to the max. In a coincidence that only happens with lazy screenwriting, Joe is accidently added to a group text invite to a bachelor bash in Miami. Contrived much?
No matter. The kids still invite Joe to come with and for the research experience, Joe offers to pay for a party-ready Airbnb. It’s animal house formula bereft of fresh comic thinking.
There’s other trouble ahead for this 40-year-old non-virgin, whose marriage-minded girlfriend, Jennifer, is played by goddess Teyana Taylor, which is no way to use the Oscar heat following her nomination for “One Battle After Another.”
My spirits rose when I saw the young comics in the mix with Hart. These goofy kids include Ben Marshall, Marcello Hernández and Kam Patterson, all of “Saturday Night Live” fame. The dream boy of the group is groom-to-be Mason. He’s played by Mason Gooding. Mason, the character and not the real Mason, has misgivings about his trip to the altar, as one does. The solution offered by his besties is snorting cocaine and making repetitive jokes about how old Joe is, about how short he is (Hart himself gets that a lot), and about how Joe (they call him uncle) can’t keep up.
Director Tim Story, a Hart favorite, used four screenwriters (Out of pity I’ll leave them nameless.) to cobble together a plot that plays like someone took “The Hangover” and its sequels and prompted ChatGPT to create a real script. Not even close. Somehow, though, the boys get involved with drug dealers and Hart spends a good chunk of screen time wearing Hawaiian shirts and talking like Al Pacino in “Scarface.” By now you’ll know if you’ll like this. No judgment if you do. Out of respect for whatever potential remains in Hart, I’ll forgive and forget and move on. Apologies again, Kevin, for not laughing out loud.