I usually care about the reasons for what makes a movie bad. Me Time doesn’t do a single thing on the screen that makes me even want to care for it. Me Time does nothing to improve the comedy genre in any way. It doesn’t test its ability; instead, it shows us Hollywood will make anything if you have the right amount of money, even if it belongs at the bottom of a garbage pail. Me Time, directed and written By John Hamburg (Meet the Parents), starring Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg, is astounding and not in a good way; it’s 100-minutes of agonizing, laughless time at the screen I wish I could have back.
The film opens up quite worrisome, you know it’s going to be a bad start when you’re five minutes in and already dozing off, but let’s get on with it. It starts with Sonny Fisher (Hart) and Huck Dembo (Wahlberg) celebrating the latter’s 29th birthday in Moab, Utah. Of course, not surprisingly some very predictable ridiculous thing happens, thus setting the tone for the lifelong friendship.
Fast forward 15 years later, and we have Sonny, a stay-at-home dad of two kids (played by Che Tafari and Amentii Sledge), who cooks, cleans, and is the president of the PTA. He’s married to a successful architect, Maya (Regina Hall); much of Sonny’s life involves all the things that come with being a father, taking the kids to their activities, and so on. One night after an awful, humiliating dinner with clientele, Maya convinces Sonny he should have time to himself while she takes the kids on vacation. The kids just seem like trophies in this film; they have nothing to do with the story at all. So all this basically leads to masturbating in the house whenever he wants to, partying at strip clubs, and eating way too much BBQ. Meanwhile, we have Huck, who is still out adventuring, partying, and hanging out with people in their 20s, even though he is planning a gathering for his 44th birthday at a secluded beach.
When Sonny and Huck finally hook up, Sonny finds out that Huck hasn’t been entirely truthful to him. This partying and irrational money spending have led him to be in a hole with some dangerous bad guys trailing his tail. This is when Sonny discovers that maybe this party life isn’t at all what it’s made out to be. The plot of this film reminds me a lot of what we had in the film Easter Sunday. Instead of exploring the ideas of friendship and what this film, I believe, is going for, we go into some dumb subplot of some angry bad guy wanting his money back. Me Time does the same thing. Instead of making a film somewhat compelling and about friendship away from his family life, we have these guys hooting and hollering around town like f**king idiots, kidnapping turtles, and oh, by the way pooping in the bad guys’ bed – like seriously, come on – and there is even some more mindless nonsense that doesn’t go anywhere.
It’s really unclear who this film is made for or how it was even greenlit in the first place. There’s nothing in this film that even brought me a slight grin. Not that I’m expecting greatness from a Kevin Hart film, but I can at least expect a laugh here and there, but it didn’t even give me that. Hamburg’s script has no life, not a lick of funny dialogue; the performances do not help it in any way. It is truly astonishing how bad this movie is. I hated this movie; I hated the agonizing experience this movie brought me; you would have more fun watching paint dry; at least it would be interesting, unlike this film.
Me Time is currently available to stream on Netflix.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClJ9-7qU0KM]
Me Time is 100-minutes of agonizing, laughless time at the screen I wish I could have back.
Codie Allen is a passionate trans and queer film critic and entertainment writer based in Orlando, FL. A Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, Dorian Awards member, and CACF member, they also contribute to The Curb and InSession Film. When they’re not writing about films, you can find them sipping way too much tea and listening to Taylor Swift.
