Where I Watched It: Netflix

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

Narration Written By: CJ Hardy

In a world where something like The Sandman might not get a second season, Netflix keeps green lighting absolute garbage. I’m beginning to think that Netflix has some blackmail dirt on Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Hart based on the amount of already sub-par material they have produced for the service. This film just solidifies it as it is one of the worst films of the year.

Me Time actually manages to take two charismatic actors (along with Regina Hall) and put them in a film with no laughs, despite being from the director of a few decent comedies. I don’t know how this happened, but I’ve long suspected that Netflix never screens their product and just pushes it out since all they need are subscribers. Unless the film is so offensive you cancel your subscription, they’re just looking to maintain or attract new subscribers. So, shit is welcome at Netflix. Especially if A-listers are willing to make it.

Me Time does the rather impossible, and takes the formula of two friends from back in the day, who now live dramatically different lives, until the wild and crazy one works his way back into the one who is just trying to be so incredibly normal. It is a formula as old as time, opposites attract, putting the quiet one in dangerous circumstances, trying to reform the wild one, that it seems almost impossible to make a film this bad. I mean, Kevin Hart has already made this film before, when it was called Central Intelligence. All they did was take the spy shit out of it, and add actual shit, a cheetah, and a turtle.

There is not one single scene in this film that worked, was funny, or seemed like the actors even cared. I think they at some point knew the film wasn’t funny, and there’s only just so many poop jokes you can put in an R rated comedy before yu realize that you are making this film for the wrong audience. Did they think 40 something’s would be laughing at Kevin Hart pooping on someone else’s bed? What was the first table read like on that? Did Kevin Hart read that joke and think “I’m a master of comedy, and man that is funny as hell.” Because if he did, he’s clearly not the master of anything, and the best thing he can ever hope for is Jumanji 3.

I wanted to quit this film for at least half the runtime of the film. But, in the effort of being able to review the film fairly, I stuck through to the end, when Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg… well… nothing really important happens. You would think this film would end with Wahlberg moving in next door and raising his own family, and you’d be wrong. Instead, we work toward a finale at Hart’s kids school, where after the audience is subjected to the entire performance of Hallelujah sung pretty damn well by a child, the joke is Kevin Hart telling that child it was shit. No, Kevin, this film is.

As far as the audio description, while I appreciate all audio description to some degree, this film would have been better served if the narrator had passed the microphone to the gang from Mystery science Theatre after the first few minutes, so at least something could be entertaining.

The only reason, and the reason many films since have been spared the grade of F, is at the end of the day, I asked myself if Me Time was equally bad as Marmaduke, a film that lowered the bar for quite literally everything in my life. Now, if anything bad happens to me in real life, I just think “well, at least I’m not watching Marmaduke again.” So, because Netflix already released what I’m sure will be the worst film of 2022, and I can’t think of one nice thing to say about this film, it gets saved the grade of total failure.

Final Grade: D-