BEFORE: OK, so now that I know I've got a (more or less) clear path to the end of the year, one that can be made without including this film in my usual "back-to-school" line-up in August/September, I'm free to watch it now without thinking that will destroy my linking later on. I've got other films that can be used for this year's back-to-school round-up, and they should fall right into mid-September, which is fine. Look I don't know why I obsess over this stuff, because May and June are also time for things like final exams and graduation, so putting one here is just as valid as in September, right? As usual, I tend to over-think things, I really should just learn to relax and go with the flow, and whatever happens to line up, that's great, if it doesn't, that should be OK too.
Tiffany Haddish carries over from "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part".
THE PLOT: A group of high school dropouts are forced to attend night school in hope that they'll pass the GED exam.
AFTER: I know it probably seems like I've been hitting the movies of 2017 and 2018 hard, and maybe I have, but it's not really intentional, it's just that about 1/3 of the movies on my main watchlist were released during or after 2017, so really, it's just a numbers game. (Also, my secondary list, consisting of Academy Screeners, Netflix and other streaming films, is very heavy on recent films, too...) So it's reasonable to expect that about every third film in my chain is a recent release - I'm doing my best to use these films to connect the older films on my list that I want to get to, which are usually in very small groupings, often pairs like "Notes on a Scandal" and "The Gift" - two Cate Blanchett films that got sandwiched between more recent releases like "Mowgli", "Logan Lucky" and "Ocean's 8". This just might be how things will be run around here for a while, with more films from 2017 and 2018 popping up on Netflix every day, it seems. But my goal is always to get to the next older film, once I get through this week of recent releases, I'll find myself watching some Ben Kingsley films from the early 2000s, like "Sexy Beast" and "House of Sand and Fog". Getting back to 2000 or even a film from 1990 isn't that big a deal, but after "Spider-Man: Far From Home" I found a way to dip back for some films from 1967, 1961, 1959 and even 1953! This is very tricky for me to do now, but I found a way to link there, and also back to the present. More on this later.
Watching a recent comedy (released in Sept. 2018) like "Night School", which just started airing on HBO, is something of a push for me - I can watch it even though I haven't "officially" added it to my list, but now that I've watched it, it skips right over the watchlist and goes right into the books - the list of "watched films, 2009-2019", which is a different list that I maintain on my IMDB account. And that's a day when my watchlist doesn't get any smaller, but neither does it get any bigger. Putting something on the watchlist just means that I HAVE a copy, either on DVD or the DVR, that I can watch any time - the secondary watchlist is for films not currently in my possession, but available on streaming or on a screener. The distinction is purely for my own edification and sanity - if I HAVE a copy in hand, that should take priority for scheduling purposes, if for no other reason than to free up space on the DVR, but it's really only working between the lists, films I have and films I can access via streaming, that I can make the best chains.
From a story standpoint, this is a film that's all over the place, it doesn't seem to be able to decide what it wants to accomplish. The main character is a high-school dropout, and one would assume that this would be a BAD thing, from a story standpoint at least. But he's doing well, he's got a good job selling BBQ grills, he's in love and about to get engaged to a wonderful girl, and then his boss offers to give him the business once he retires. So there doesn't seem to be a downside. Ah, but then circumstances change, and he finds himself out of work, and suddenly regretting not having that diploma. Worse, he never told his girlfriend that he didn't graduate high school, and he overcompensates by driving a car he can't afford, always paying for dinner, and so on. So his life is really a house of cards that's about to topple over - and then suddenly not having graduated is once again a BAD thing. (Even worse than failing is apparently not being able to admit failure, but that doesn't come into play until the end of the film.)
Then there's terrible inconsistencies in most of the film's minor characters - Teddy drives back to his high school, and along the way gets into an argument with a loud woman in the next car. So of COURSE she turns out to be someone who's crucial to him enrolling in night school and getting that GED. But if he was rude to her at that traffic stop, then she should HATE him when she meets him again - and she does, for about five seconds, before she starts championing his cause. Wildly inconsistent. Plus, the principal of the high school turns out to be someone that Teddy went to school with, and Teddy completely embarrassed him in front of the whole school. So this character should HATE Teddy too, because you reap what you sow, right? And the principal does hate him, which works for a while, until suddenly the movie decides that's a dead-end, and it's another unwarranted character reversal. WHAT?
The other students in night school are complete messes as characters - not because their lives are in freefall, as you might expect to see some people going to night school who haven't had lucky breaks in their lives - but because they're all combinations of weird stereotypes, too many tropes going on at once, across the board. Remember "The Breakfast Club"? That film had all the major characters divided into simple, easy to understand stereotypes - the geek, the jock, the rich girl, the weird girl, and the tough guy. They played around a bit with the archetypes and found some common ground between them, but it made for a good starting point. Here all the minor characters have incredibly dense but also contradictory back-stories, and it's mostly unnecessary.
Take the waiter (who also should HATE Teddy, for a different reason, and he does, but then he's Teddy's best friend about five minutes later, for some reason) who's an immigrant from Mexico and made a lot of money in tips as a waiter, but dreams of being a dental hygienist, and also secretly dreams of being a pop star. Wow, that's a lot of information about a minor character - do we really need all of that? Or the housewife/mother of two who dropped out of school when she got pregnant, has a very abusive, controlling husband, but is also very religious and talks about how "blessed" she is all the time, but wants to get a job to get out of the house more, and also desperately wants to have sex with someone who isn't her husband. Yeah, that's a lot to take in, and I didn't even ask about any of that. Like, pick a lane and stay with it, so I can understand this character and move on. Probably the most consistent character is the one who's in jail, and taking the class via Skype. Thankfully the film never gets into his back-story, or why he's in jail, or what his secret ambition is, because IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER.
From the very first time that we see Teddy taking a standardized test and getting confused, with the letters and numbers swirling around before his eyes, it's clear that he's got some kind of learning disability, probably dyslexia. So this could explain a lot about why he dropped out, why he's been fronting for so long - but it stymied me why the movie didn't want to explore this point, not for the first hour anyway. Why would a storyline about the night school students sneaking in to the principal's office to steal the midterm answers take precedence over following up on his obvious learning disability? This seemed both illogical and socially irresponsible. BUT, the film eventually does get there, when the teacher finally realizes that he's got a problem with learning. So, points for that, but then this is ruined by her unorthodox "solution", which is to bring him into a mixed martial arts studio and try to beat some focus into him. Umm, here's a tip, if he doesn't know the answer to a math question, then punching him in the face or putting him in a headlock is probably NOT going to get him to learn the answer. Is this some kind of new method, let's beat up the people with learning disabilities in order to motivate them?
But that's this film, the only thing consistent to it is its inconsistency. The real night school experience must be incredibly boring if the film has to spend the whole time trying desperately to liven it up. Well, we know that night school students aren't eligible to go to prom, but let's find a way to make that happen. Also, we know that night school students don't attend graduation ceremonies with regular students, but let's pretend that someone could make an exception and bring that about. Let's just completely ignore the fact that Teddy had to take the GED test an extra 20 times, which probably would have put him in the graduating class the FOLLOWING year, even if they did count night school graduates in with the regular high-school students, which they don't.
I hate to say it, but even "Billy Madison" made more sense than this film does, and that film wasn't even meant to be taken seriously at all. The best jabs in this whole film come at the expense of Chic-Fil-A, which is clearly the intended target of the jokes about the "Christian Chicken" franchise. Sure, it's like picking low-hanging fruit, but it completely underscores the fact that there should be no religious-themed messages coming from a fast food chain. Stop serving up hate and discrimination with your chicken sandwiches, and keep your orthodoxy out of my lunch-boxy.
Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Taran Killam (last seen in "Just Married"), Ben Schwartz (also carrying over from "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Rob Riggle (last seen in "12 Strong"), Mary Lynn Rajskub (last seen in "Wilson"), Romany Malco (last seen in "Last Vegas"), Al Madrigal, Anne Winters, Fat Joe, Megalyn Echikunwoke (last seen in "The Meddler"), Keith David (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Yvonne Orji, Bresha Webb, Jeff Rose, Donna Biscoe (last seen in "The Fundamentals of Caring"), Owen Harn.
RATING: 4 out of 10 right triangles
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