Fatherhood – Film Review

A father named Matthew Logelin (Kevin Hart) brings up his baby girl Maddy (Melody Hurd) as a single dad after the unexpected death of his wife Liz who died just a day after their daughter’s birth.

Scrolling through Netflix this morning, I noticed that a brand new Kevin Hart film titled Fatherhood was currently the top piece of entertainment on the entire platform in the country of Canada, and I was shocked – I had never heard of this movie before. I usually try to stay up to date with filming announcements, trailers, posters, etc. However, this film’s release came as a complete surprise to me. Not only had I not seen any marketing materials for it (i.e a poster or trailer) but I had heard nobody talking about it despite the film being number one in Canada.

Kevin Hart is one of my favorite comedians of the past twenty years and I think that he is usually quite hilarious in everything he’s in, even if the projects themselves aren’t terrific, and the same thoughts of mine were repeated with Fatherhood. Hart is a genuinely endearing presence in the role of Matthew Logelin and Hart has excellent comedic timing but this film just felt so flat and uneventful.

It’s a nearly two-hour movie that doesn’t have too much entertainment value throughout. There are plenty of scenes where we will watch Hart’s character trying his best to take care of his baby girl Maddy and of course, this being a comedy, he usually fails tremendously. Some of these scenes can actually end up being relatively funny but after a while, some jokes are repeated and it just gets old fast. There are only so many times I can watch Kevin Hart try to change a diaper and it going wrong before it just stops being funny.

Also, this may sound like a weird note to make but I genuinely have no idea why Lil Rel Howery was in this movie and what his character’s purpose in this story was supposed to be. He just kind of shows up every once in a while to say a one-liner and then disappears for about twenty minutes, and it’s a strange repeat process. Ever since his breakout role in Jordan Peele‘s horror-thriller Get Out, Howery has been getting tons of comedic roles and he’s usually terrific but I don’t get his inclusion in Fatherhood whatsoever. The script legitimately doesn’t care to flesh out his character in the slightest.

But I do have to say that the film as a whole is not insufferable by any means. It’s one of those movies where if you have nothing better to do all day, you could definitely just throw it on, watch it, maybe have a laugh or two and then forget about it in a few days. Or maybe you’re cooking dinner or doing some work and want some background noise, this is the kind of movie to throw on.

It’s more than likely not going to grab your attention enough to pull you away from your work or your cooking, but maybe you’ll look up every once in a while to laugh for a minute before getting back to whatever it was you were doing. Honestly, though, that is not a good thing. A great comedy should make you laugh consistently throughout and make you forget all your life’s worries. And really, a great film, in general, should transport you into that world and make you feel like you’ve walked in the lead protagonist’s shoes and make you feel as though you’ve just gone on a journey with them. Sadly, Fatherhood made me feel none of these things.