KEVIN HART: WHAT NOW? – Review

How long since there’s been a comedian who regularly opens stand-up films theatrically? Larry the Cable Guy, Chris Rock, etc serve up sets on HBO, but when it comes to actually driving to the multiplex and paying to see a comic on the big screen, you have to go back almost 30 years to Eddie Murphy RAW and Richard Pryor before that. Kevin Hart’s sporadically funny new concert film KEVIN HART WHAT NOW? is his third to play theaters in the past five years. It was filmed in his home town of Philadelphia before a sold-out audience of 50,000 at Philly’s Lincoln Financial Field.  Hart’s actual set lasts about 75 minutes, but this feature is padded out with a casino-set opening that spoofs 007 and Denzel Washington’s counting scene in THE EQUALIZER. Halle Barry, Ed Helms, and Don Cheadle all join Hart for this mostly pointless prologue.

Hart steers clear of race and politics and current events in his standup routine. His theme for KEVIN HART WHAT NOW?  is mostly family. There are longish routines on personal subjects: Home ownership, the influence a mostly-white private school has on his son, how he deals with angry text messages from his wife, being scared by THE CONJURING, and imaging life without kneecaps. A highlight is a bit about his father’s visit with his wheelchair-bound girlfriend Connie, whom he’s run over with his car.  I like that Hart kept, despite plenty of F-bombs, the subjects of the material relatively wholesome, at least for the first hour. He eventually launches into a vulgar story about sex toys on a film shoot, followed by a long stale joke about getting a BJ while he has numbing cream on his junk. The dirty stuff fell flat. There are some projected graphics on the stage behind Hart to illustrate what he’s talking about. They’re unnecessary, though the visual with him squatting on an oversized toilet, terrified of a fan leaning over a bathroom stall to snap his photo works.

I never once laughed out loud watching KEVIN HART WHAT NOW? I’m not an easy laugh with these kind of things and I never watch standup, but I smiled a lot and I wasn’t bored. The packed audience I saw it with at the screening roared along with the 50k on screen and that made it an enjoyable time at the movies. Despite starring in mostly lousy films, Kevin Hart is fun to be with. He bounces back and forth to the edge of that stage, his energy and timing filling the vast expanse of this huge stadium and his audience clearly loves him.

 3 of 5 Stars