Me Time   ☆

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

Directed by: John Hamburg

Tagline: This is not what he had in mind.

f you try hard enough, you can usually find at least something to appreciate about most movies. A promising premise, a standout performance, a flicker of creativity, an irresistible joke – you can often see some merit in the project even if the film itself isn’t exactly a cinematic masterpiece. But, for the life of me, I can’t come up with a single positive thing to say about Me Time, an alleged comedy that is perplexingly dull, scattershot, and unfunny.

Supposedly a buddy adventure but with a bunch of seemingly random ideas thrown into the mix to stretch the slim plot to feature length, Me Time offers nothing in the way of effective wit, warmth, or surprises.

The drama revolves around stay-at-home dad Sonny Fisher (Kevin Hart) who has been taking care of the kids – son Dashiell (Che Tafari) and daughter Ava (Amentii Sledge) – while his wife, Maya (Regina Hall), pursues a career in architecture. His life has become all about domestic duties and school events, while Maya is starting to feel that she isn’t as connected to her children as she should be.

In a bid to bond with Dash and Ava while giving Sonny some much-needed alone time, Maya takes the kids on a trip to visit family. After realizing he doesn’t have much to do on his own, Sonny reluctantly decides to reconnect with his old best friend, Huck (Mark Wahlberg), who he has been avoiding since he feels the pair have outgrown their friendship.

Huck enthusiastically welcomes Sonny to the elaborate birthday shindig he has arranged for himself. But the celebration doesn’t go quite as smoothly as anyone in attendance would have hoped.

A series of underwhelming events lead to predictable hijinks that should theoretically be funny but struggle to deliver even a single genuine laugh (unless you think projectile vomiting and scatological content is funny, in which case this film is hilarious).

The attempts at humour are often lowbrow, crude, or raunchy, and consistently fail to amuse. John Hamburg’s script is unexciting and the direction flavourless. The plot is all over the place. The cast has no chemistry and their performances often seem phoned in.

Me Time ultimately leaves you wondering why affluent, successful performers aren’t more discernible about the scripts they pick and projects they attach their names to, and why Netflix keeps churning out such subpar content when they clearly have both the resources and the ability to produce better films. With the never ending supply of (generally significantly more interesting) content that is available to us in the age of streaming, watching Me Time is definitely not the best use of your time.

Rating system: *Not on your life * ½ If you really must waste your time ** Hardly worth the bother ** ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only
*** Good enough for a look see *** ½ Recommended viewing **** Don’t miss it **** ½ Almost perfect ***** Perfection