Platitudes ladled with a high viscosity of sap are du jour in the shamelessly pandering “Fatherhood,” Kevin Hart’s stumbling attempt to follow in the footsteps of Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Steve Carell and Adam Sandler. You know, the exclusive family of comedians talented enough to swing effortlessly between eliciting laughs and tears. I’ll give Hart this: he certainly had me crying —in pain. Ouch!
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Watching him attempt to flesh out real-life widowed dad Matt Logelin was tantamount to rubbernecking on the highway. There’s a morbid curiosity to witnessing him crater while putting forth his absolute best at wringing emotion from a tale he and director Paul Weitz (“About a Boy”) have rendered lifeless through an over eagerness to be liked. It’s so disingenuous, so on the nose, you practically feel embarrassed for the poor guy. Yet, I couldn’t look away as he ran full speed smack into his acting limitations.
We’re talking Humpty-Dumpty here, a man falling to pieces before our eyes —and you can do nothing to stop it. Very sad. Even more distressing, this isn’t the sort of pity we're “supposed” to be experiencing. Our empathy belongs with his grieving character, not him. But at his feet is where we land. This phenomenon can no doubt be traced to the fact we never see Hart as anyone other than Kevin Hart. He flails at being Matt Logelin, but consistently comes up empty in persuading us he’s anything other than a funny man desperate to be taken seriously.
It’s just not happening. Shame, too, because the tearjerker potential is through the roof in adapting Logelin’s memoir “Two Kisses for Maddy.” If you haven’t been following along with the real guy’s rounds on daytime TV, Matt Logelin went through a certain kind of hell in 2008 when his wife, Liz, delivered their baby girl, Maddy, one day and died the next from a pulmonary aneurysm. Suddenly, the high-tech guy was as low as can be, forced to set aside his overwhelming grief to care for the couple’s newborn entirely alone. Or, so he thought.
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Here’s where Hillary’s “it takes a village” gobbledygook took hold, as the world literally rushed to his side upon establishing a daily blog chronicling his struggles to raise a daughter while also maintaining competency in his career. Sorry, not empathizing; not when society expects millions of women to do the same without a lick of credit (or daycare) for how hard they work to be both a mom and a professional. Boo hoo, poor, poor Matt. Come see me when you can do the single-parent thing while also menstruating and dealing with ever-shifting hormones. Please!
I suspect the original script by Dana Stevens (“Safe Haven,” “City of Angels”) made note of such double-standards. But that was before Hart, Weitz and the studio execs got their grubby male hands on the material. Voila, Matt is anointed a saint we’re to genuflect because he can raise a kid on his own. Stop the presses! The powers that be have also seen fit to move Matt’s story from California to Boston, where the film incentives are so much more appealing. No beef with that, except there’s nothing in the script resembling local color, not even a horrible attempt at a Bawston accent. We do get glittering, touristy shots of the Public Garden, Boston Common, Boston Children’s Museum and the Zakim Bridge. What? No Fenway Park? OK, the producers did see fit to place tiny Red Sox batting helmets on the noggins of each member to the Make Way for Ducklings sculptures.
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Ah, but I digress. The story, dummy, the story! Ah, that. Not much to report there, other than Weitz recycles just about every single-dad cliché we’ve seen since time began. And it plays out EXACTLY as you’d expect. The only surprises are competent turns by Alfre Woodard as Matt’s tough-but-incredibly sweet mother-in-law, Marion; and DeWanda Wise is sensational as Matt’s potential second-wife material, also named Liz. Then there’s the adorable Melody Hurd as Maddy at age 9.
When those three fine ladies are on screen, “Fatherhood” actually works. I’d even go so far as to say they render it charming. But then Hart shows up to instantly deaden the mood. Ditto for his dim sidekicks, Jordan (Lil Rel Howery from “Get Out”), and Oscar (Anthony Carrigan, aWinchester native), both injecting unhealthy doses of inanity to complement Hart’s occasional soliloquies on baby excrement.
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No wonder “Fatherhood” ended up on Netflix (just in time for Father’s Day!). This after the producers watched helplessly as their film was (deservedly) kicked around the theater schedule like a soccer ball. Television is definitely where this insincere treacle belongs. But not on Netflix; but on Lifetime or Hallmark, venues eager to feed genetically modified mush. Some, no doubt, will eat it up. Not me. It gave my jaded ticker nothing but heartburn.
Movie review
FATHERHOOD
(PG-13 for some strong language and suggestive material.) Cast includes Kevin Hart, Melody Hurd, Alfrie Woodard, Lil Rel Howery, DeWanda Wise, Anthony Carrigan and Paul Reiser. Premiering June 18 on Netflix. Grade: C+
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