‘Kevin Hart: Irresponsible’ On Netflix Reveals The Devil Is In The Details Of His Insecurities

If you’re expecting to see and hear Kevin Hart dish about his Oscars debacle, you’ve clicked on the wrong special. Irresponsible filmed too soon, literally, for the comedian and movie star to explain once more his role in hosting and then not hosting this year’s Academy Awards.

But there’s plenty going on during this hour, filmed for Netflix at The O2 arena in London, to figure out how Hart handles his fame and the backlash of intense scrutiny that has come with it.

Let’s pause for a moment, first of all, to appreciate both the visual and the symbolism of tucking the comedian inside a cable trunk, all to wheel him out to his stage in the round. So much star power, all cooped up. Doing so, however, allows Hart to magically appear onstage with elements of both surprise and showmanship.

“Let’s just get to the shit. OK?”

OK, then!

There’s an act-out of all the ways Hart and his second wife could attempt to play off getting caught mid-coitus by his kids, which isn’t as irresponsible as his premise suggests, until he goes off on tangents to describe why his house has a no-locked-doors policy, trying to grapple with the impending puberty of his 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, and finally into how paparazzi caught him cheating on his second wife late in 2017.

“Everybody can see it. Everybody can judge it. I don’t care,” he tells his fans here. “It’s the bed I made for myself. I lay in it.”

In his breakthrough concert film and documentary, 2011’s Laugh At My Pain, Hart let us into his upbringing in Philadelphia and his relationships with his father and the rest of his family. As his comedy star has exploded, Hart has continued to deliver high-energy performances that seek universal appeal from his audiences.

But he still has deep insecurities. He jokes about reviewing his second wife’s porn search history to find his worst fears confirmed, as well as catching himself in a mirror he’d installed on the ceiling for that very purpose, only to focus in on his perceived physical imperfections.

Hold on while we pause now to acknowledge the obvious metaphor of holding up a mirror to oneself.

Many couples certainly can relate to the concept of a spouse kissing-up to the other following a screw-up to make good; infidelity is another matter. But Hart doesn’t want to dig through his weeds quite like Chris Rock did in his Netflix hour, Tamborine. No, Hart would rather gloss over the dirty details. Much like his defensiveness earlier this year about old homophobic routines and social media messages. Hart proved not quite so willing to kiss up to society or to the Academy to make good.

And he still holds onto some old-fashioned attitudes about gender. Women must have immense patience to put with raising children, while men are supposed to be both fun dads and yet also disciplinarians. He calls his son “a little bitch” and his daughter “a tomboy” and is most worried about her getting “blood butt” from having her period; later, Hart describes his good friend bringing his baby over to the house as “a bitch move.” But these semantics all play into the comedian’s lingering insecurities about his own machismo.

He even punctuates his shortcomings with two sound cues; first, a piercing echo from the microphone when he learns about his wife’s porn viewing; then, an instrumental soundtrack for a series of act-outs in which Hart imagines himself protecting his home and family from intruders (in fact, robbers did steal more than $500,000 from Hart’s home in 2016, but the comedian was out of town then).

Hart is best onstage when he leans into the situations that make him most vulnerable. Whether that’s traveling in Japan without an interpreter, dealing with actual shit on the carpet of his home and not knowing whose it is, or learning how to ski in Aspen.

And he’s best onscreen when he has a foil — in his movies, he attains that chemistry with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and in a brilliant closing bit, Hart finds a comedic nemesis in Seal, worried that the singer will “out-black” Kev during his “black week” in Aspen. His family’s failure on the slopes is full of callbacks, cinematic in its description, and also exposes all of his vulnerabilities once more.

Earlier, approaching the midpoint of his hour, Hart claims his overriding message to us in Irresponsible is this: “Don’t run away from your bullshit. Embrace it and become better.”

Let’s hope we all remember to take Hart’s advice. Hart included.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Kevin Hart: Irresponsible on Netflix