Night School review: Has more of a social conscience than the standard Kevin Hart vehicle

Hart plays Teddy Walker, who has to return to the high school he hated for night classes

Dir: Malcolm D Lee; Starring: Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Ron Riggle, Romany Malco, Anne Winters, Keith David, Taran Killam, Megalyn Echikunwoke. Cert 12A, 111 mins

Kevin Hart comedies tend to be very patchy affairs – hilarious in small doses but repetitive and with trite and predictable plot lines. Night School is one of the better ones. It has more of a social conscience than most of his other vehicles but keeps the laughs coming too.

Director Malcolm D Lee (who was behind last year’s hit Girls Trip) combines the slapstick and sentimentality with some barbed observations about class, race and opportunity in today’s America.

Hart plays Teddy Walker, a would-be big shot who flunked out of high school 17 years ago and has been making a living as a barbecue equipment salesman. He drives a sports car and tries to convince his fiance Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke), a successful career woman, that he is as wealthy as she is.

In fact, his life is built on a “financial house of cards”. We guess immediately that the house will soon come tumbling down. When misfortune strikes, the only way Teddy can get his life back on track is enrolling in night classes at the high school he hated and passing his General Equivalency Diploma (GED).

Teddy is a loud-mouthed hustler who compensates in the “school of life” for his shortcomings in the classroom. (He can’t even spell his own Christian name.) He aims to schmooze and bribe his teacher Carrie (Tiffany Haddish) into getting him the grades he needs.

She is too strong-minded for that. Teddy is in a class with a bunch of other oddballs from every age and class who also need their high school diplomas. At first, he despises them and they loathe him – but soon they become firm friends and allies.

Some of the humour here is very puerile (we have jokes about flatulence and pubic hair in the cheesecake). Hart, though, puts across the crassest jokes with such conviction that they generally work. He also plays up his little boy lost routine to whip up the pathos.

One moment, he will be making foul-mouthed tirades and the next he will be looking to be coddled and tucked in by his long-suffering mother. It helps that Haddish is every bit as abrasive and funny as he is.

We know almost from the outset just where the film is headed. Nonetheless, Night School ends on a redemptive note. Hart doesn’t show quite the same level of sexism and bungling machismo as in his films with Ice Cube or The Rock as his partner – and whenever he does take a step too far, Haddish’s tough but tender teacher is always there to push him straight back in line.

Night School is released in UK cinemas 28 September