’72 Hours’ Review: Kevin Hart in Netflix Intergenerational Comedy

There’s an amusing, insightful movie to be made about the culture clash that would inevitably result between a 40-year-old Millennial and several Gen Z twenty-somethings. But that’s not the new Netflix comedy directed by Tim Story (Barbershop, Ride Along) and starring Kevin Hart.

Instead, as might have been predicted, 72 Hours aims for the lowest common denominator, with a wildly farcical plotline in which Hart’s character is mistaken at various times for a human trafficker, a cop and a Cuban drug lord. He also gets into a brawl with several women in a moving limousine and finds himself in a smuggler’s boat carrying an illegal contraband haul of “whale dicks.” Add to that Hart’s face swollen to monstrous proportions after being stung by a jellyfish, and if all of this sounds hilarious, then this is the movie for you.

The script crafted by a quartet of screenwriters features a reasonably clever premise. Hart plays Joe, a marketing executive whose pitch for a new vodka line falls flat. “You don’t seem to get youth culture anymore,” his boss (Kevin Dunn, doing his usual exasperated thing) tells him, adding that if Joe doesn’t get with the times he’ll be passed over for a promotion.

It’s fortuitous, then, that Joe finds himself accidentally included in a group chat with several young men planning a bachelor party in Miami. When he impulsively responds with a cash gift, he’s invited to join the revelers, who have no idea that he could be their dad. Desperate to find out what makes the younger generation tick, Joe decides to go, much to the irritation of his longtime girlfriend (Teyana Taylor), who is impatient for a marriage proposal.

Cue the would-be yucks as Joe meets up with Nick (Marcello Hernández), Hunter (Ben Marshall), Freshman (Kam Patterson) — all three comedians Saturday Night Live recruits — and groom-to-be Mason (Mason Gooding, Heart Eyes, Scream 7) in a palatial Miami mansion. The house turns out to be the former home of a deceased drug kingpin, which leads to dangerous complications as Joe suffers a series of misadventures, including several run-ins with a group of criminals led by the menacing Jaze (Michael Mando, illustrating the dangers of typecasting after his far more serious performance as Nacho Varga in Better Call Saul).  

The film’s unfunny nadir comes when the gangsters force Joe to ingest cocaine, which for some reason transforms him into the heavily accented “Riccardo Montana,” complete with Scarface riffs including “say hello to my little friend.” The gag is repeated later on; Hart and the filmmakers apparently are convinced that his Al Pacino impression is a laugh riot.

Any stabs at cultural satire about, say, Gen Z’s addiction to documenting their lives on social media, are subsumed by the crazy action-comedy shenanigans, with the younger cast, all of whom have proven themselves funny on prior occasions, unable to elevate the pedestrian material. Hart tries hard (he always tries hard), throwing himself into the slapstick with his usual determination. The fact that he’s able to wrest a few laughs is a testament to his comic chops and professionalism.

There are some semi-amusing cameos along the way, including a brief appearance by Mike Epps as a cop, and another performer whose identity has been deemed a spoiler by Netflix. But both are outshone by a hilarious Andy Garcia, who demonstrates that, under the right circumstances, sometimes serious actors can be the funniest of all. It’s a shame, though, to see Taylor, fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn as a fierce revolutionary in One Battle After Another, reduced to playing the disapproving girlfriend. It feels less a departure than a regression. 

And, of course there are the obligatory outtakes during the end credits, apparently intended to prove that the actors, at least, found the proceedings hilarious.