Night School is terrible. But Tiffany Haddish is great.

She can't help but be interesting, even in schlock

Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart.
(Image credit: Eli Joshua Ade)

Tiffany Haddish was a long-time comic and performer before last year's comedy smash Girls Trip propelled her to greater fame and even some award conversations. So it's only natural that it's taken awhile for her inevitable star vehicle to hit theaters. It's also perhaps understandable why some critics took to concern-trolling as they waited: "Tiffany Haddish deserves better," one publication declared, referring to Night School, a movie that no one had yet actually seen.

As it turns out, Haddish does deserve better than Friday's release of Night School, in large part because the movie was clearly designed to show off star Kevin Hart first and everyone else a distant second. Though the movie shares director Malcolm D. Lee and a similarly talented ensemble cast with Girls Trip , it has all the hallmarks of Hart's films: a convoluted story that goes out of its way to paint Hart as an insecure but hard-working go-getter, bad CG-augmented slapstick, pointless but plot-required deception, and unearned swells of sentimentality.

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Jesse Hassenger

Jesse Hassenger's film and culture criticism has appeared in The Onion's A.V. Club, Brooklyn Magazine, and Men's Journal online, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, where he also writes fiction, edits textbooks, and helps run SportsAlcohol.com, a pop culture blog and podcast.