Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fatherhood’ on Netflix, a Single-Dad Dramedy Showing a Different Side of Kevin Hart

Three notable things about Netflix movie Fatherhood: It’s likely the most substantial and dynamic role for serial funnyguy Kevin Hart, a serious step away from the Ride Along and Jumanji films and his sitcom Die Hart. It’s directed by Paul Weitz, whose career launched with American Pie but subsequently found his footing in well-balanced comedies like About a Boy and Grandma (and we’ll make that assertion while stepping around Little Fockers). And finally, yes, this is a BOATS (Based On A True Story) movie, adapting Matt Logelin’s nonfiction story of single fatherhood, Two Kisses for Maddie: A Memoir of Love and Loss. Now let’s see if these elements come together in a functionable, enjoyable manner.

FATHERHOOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Matt (Hart) stands in front of a gathering in a church. They’re mourniers. He can’t seem to find the right words. “This sucks,” he says. Flashback: Matt and Liz (Deborah Ayorinde) sit in the doctor’s office. She needs a C-section — tonight. It’s early, but it can’t wait. The procedure goes well, and little Maddie is born. Liz’s parents, Marian (Alfre Woodard) and Mike (Frankie Faison), arrive to meet their granddaughter. Barely a day after the birth, Liz gets out of bed, but quickly collapses. She struggles to breathe. Matt is pushed out of the room by an orderly, and he never sees his wife alive again. Pulmonary embolism. Yes, this sucks.

After the funeral, many people, especially the mother-in-law, question Matt’s ability to raise a daughter by himself. “Extremely immature” is Marian’s personality assessment. She invites herself to stay with him and Maddie for six months, but he refuses. Well then, he should move away from his good job and good friends and go back to Minnesota, where both his and Liz’s families live. Nope. Not gonna do that either. He draws on his best buds Jordan (Lil Rel Howery) and Oscar (Anthony Carrigan) for support. Jordan goes with him to the baby store and helps him put together the crib, which is a struggle. They volley one-liners back and forth as Maddie parks in her bouncer, her head going back and forth like she’s watching Venus vs. Serena.

This ain’t easy, but Matt works through the sleepless nights and endless diapers, putting a basketball hoop above the diaper pail and putting down some threes until one splatters poo all over the backboard. He brings Maddie to work, where his kind boss (Paul Reiser) amazingly tolerates the interruption of client presentations to deal with the colicky baby. As expected, there are montages in this existence: Matt delivers punchlines when stupid people ask him where the baby’s mom is, e.g., training with NASA to be an astronaut, doing hard time, etc.; mishaps occur, like when he leaves the baby carrier, baby still in it, outside the supermarket; he fights that (expletive deleted) car seat into the car as Oscar and Jordan offer their assistance.

FIVE YEARS PASS. Maddie (Melody Hurd) is now an adorable post-toddler. There will be school. There will be blood on the playground. There will be a Kevin Hart mini-standup bit during a parent support group. There will be clashes with the mother-in-law. There will be a love interest, coincidentally also named Liz (DeWanda Wise). There will be ups and downs. There will be barf. This is fatherhood, after all.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Fatherhood is from a long line of post-Mr. Mom flicks full of diaper mishaps and they like, including Three Men and a Baby and Daddy Day Care. Hart has said in interviews that he wants the film to be a nuanced portrayal of Black fathers, and it succeeds modestly, so put it up there with Will Smith drama The Pursuit of Happyness.

Performance Worth Watching: Hart surprises precisely nobody by showing the kind of comedio-dramatic range we all know he has, and it’s plenty more than enough to carry this movie. (Frankly, he’s shown more character dynamics in his standup persona than in his movie roles.) DeWanda Wise is the film’s most charming and charismatic presence, though, and you’ll wonder why she doesn’t enjoy more substantial screen time.

Memorable Dialogue: Nice guy Paul Reiser boss commiserates with Matt on parenthood: “When you get to solid poops, it’s not a picnic.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Fatherhood succeeds on the basic level of being a slick, earnest and watchable dramedy anchored by a strong performance from Hart — again, not a surprise, and I assert that he’s absolutely capable of bearing more weight, just like Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler before him. The supporting cast is uniformly strong as well, with Howery lending the film some comic relief, Woodard and Faison (both underrated) giving it some easy depth, Wise spicing it romantically and Hurd showing confidence and cuteness and none of the precocity of child actors in lesser films.

Hower, the screenplay, by Weitz and Dana Stevens, doesn’t match the capabilities of the cast. It adheres to formula, indulges easy and overly familiar jokes, and throws in a contrived third-act non-crisis to give the story some climactic oomph. The movie’s better when it doesn’t try to manufacture an larger arc, and just lets Hart show the struggle of selfless parenting, how fathers and mothers tend to dwell on two or three failures in the face of hundreds of wins. It evolves into a you-and-me-against-the-world kind of story complicated by the Hart character’s unwillingness to let some of the outside world in, an overreaction to the many doubters who insisted he’d never be able to do this by himself. Much of the film’s substance gets diluted by the movie’s lack of specificity, exemplified by how it addresses few of Matt’s pragmatic concerns beyond stale comedy tropes involving poop and sleeplessness. Fatherhood is likeable enough, but it doesn’t change the game for this type of movie, and it’s long past time for that to happen.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite its commonplace comedy and drama, Fatherhood is a sufficient crowd-pleaser driven by Hart’s ability to convey the myriad uncertainties of parenthood. It’s good enough.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Fatherhood on Netflix