Kevin Hart’s '72 Hours' Flops as Hangover Knockoff
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- Kevin Hart plays Joe, a 40-year-old advertising executive who infiltrates a Miami bachelor party to better understand younger consumers, triggering a chaotic weekend involving cocaine, a drug lord, and a Tony Montana-inspired alter ego.
- Tim Story directs '72 Hours,' a Netflix comedy that strains for laughs by piling on absurd elements — including whale sperm and a belligerent drug kingpin — instead of focusing on its core generational culture-clash premise.
- Marcello Hernández, Ben Marshall, and Kam Patterson, all 'Saturday Night Live' alums, co-star as the bachelor party trio who reluctantly accept Hart’s character, delivering sporadic humor but underwritten roles that limit their impact.
- Teyana Taylor appears as Joe’s long-suffering girlfriend awaiting a proposal, offering a grounded performance that contrasts sharply with the film’s increasingly wacky and implausible plot turns.
- Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote the script, which borrows from 'The Hangover,' 'Bridesmaids,' and 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,' but fails to balance its multiple subplots or commit to a consistent tone.
- Netflix releases '72 Hours' as a summer comedy vehicle for Hart, continuing its investment in broad, franchise-style humor despite critical skepticism about the film’s originality and execution.
Why it matters: For Netflix, betting on another 'Hangover'-style comedy with a star-driven premise risks reinforcing a pattern of prioritizing formula over freshness, especially as Hart’s inconsistent filmography and the film’s cluttered narrative fail to deliver the sharp generational satire its premise promises. The movie’s underperformance in critical reception could dampen momentum for similar mid-tier streaming comedies.
