Director: John Hamburg

Writer: John Hamburg

Starring: Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg, Regina Hall, Jimmy O. Yang, Luis Gerardo Méndez

Rating: ★★½

Me Time is the second Kevin Hart film to be released on Netflix so this year, following the surprisingly decent The Man from Toronto back in June. This time around Hart plays Sonny Fisher, a stay-at-home dad whose entire life revolves around his children and their school. He’s the president of the PTA, running their talent show, and micromanaging his children’s spare time. His life wasn’t always like this, as his wild-card friend Huck Dembo (Mark Wahlberg) used to get him into wild situations. He thinks that part of his life is behind him, until his wife takes the children to her parent’s house for a week, and he has some ‘me time’. Not wanting to turn into a sad crossing guard at his children’s school, when they eventually grow up, Sonny reconnects with Huck for his forty-fourth birthday party, where things go from bad to worse.

What follows is pretty much what you expect, with a plotline that feels ripped straight out of a mid-2000s Adam Sandler film. For the most part it’s a light-hearted fun story about friends reconnecting and growing a little along the way. They have their ups and downs, but you know they’re going to make up in the end and get a happy ending. There’s plenty of screwball jokes, from Sonny taking on a mountain lion, to the beyond excessive lifestyle that Huck leads. Huck’s party is essentially a small-time festival in the California dessert for five days, at least until Huck’s loan shark and his flamethrower wielding sidekick come and ruin the party. From there things get even more extreme and wild.

Kevin Hart does what he does best and works well with Mark Wahlberg. Their polar opposite characters are endearing and bounce off each other, with plenty of good jokes between them to make this an enjoyable watch. Sadly, the whole thing is let down by just how gross some of the film is. There are poop jokes, vomiting, and even one scene with a tortoise, that’s one of the most stomach churning, disgusting things ever. When it’s more family-friendly comedy it works, but when it goes to more crass humour, it’s just not funny.

For the most part Me Time is a pretty decent each-watch. It has jokes that are bad, but then it moves on to more funny bits. It’s not going to win any awards, or be something you watch more than once, but it’s fairly enjoyable.  

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