Somewhere around the midpoint of “Me Time,” if not sooner, it may hit you: You could be watching “Old School” or “The Hangover” instead.
Those two gems from the 2000s do better jobs, respectively, of mining laughs from a man mired in midlife monotony learning how to have fun again and from a wild night shared among longtime friends that gets out of hand than this underwhelming comedy landing on Netflix this week.
On the other hand, neither “Old School” nor “The Hangover” boasts the typically hilarious Kevin Hart, as “Me Time” does. And, if you’ll excuse our grammar, that’s not nothing. (Conversely, neither features Hart’s co-star, Mark Walberg, which is another point for each of them.)
OK, that was a low blow, and Wahlberg is NOT the problem with “Me Time.” That honor goes to the script by John Hamburg, who also directs. Given that Hamburg’s writing credits include “Meet the Parents,” “Zoolander” and “Why Him?,” it feels fair to have expected a bit more from “Me Time.”
What we get is a pair of longtime friends, Hart’s Sonny Fisher and Wahlberg’s Huck Dembo, who haven’t spent much time together in recent years. It used to be that Sonny would never miss one of Huck’s birthday celebrations, and Hamburg introduces us to the pair 15 years ago in Utah, as they prepare to jump off a mountain together in wingsuits to celebrate Huck turning 29. Sonny tries to back out at the last minute, but, as you can imagine, he does end up in the air … with mixed results.
In the present day, Sonny is the supportive husband of talented architect May (Regina Hall, “Girls Trip”) and keeps extremely busy being a stay-at-home dad to two young kids, serving as PTA president and directing the school talent show.
He believes he doesn’t have time to indulge still-partying bachelor Huck with his coming celebration of “the big 4-4.” Plus, the family is set to visit Maya’s parents (John Amos and Anna Maria Horsford) then anyway. He’s not taking part, and he’s seemingly fine with it.
However, Maya — apparently going for Wife of the Year — decides Sonny needs some “me time” and declares she’ll take the kids to see her parents without him, leaving him the house and an open schedule. This is despite the fact that she’s never on her own with the kids and doesn’t really know all that the gig requires.
“Honestly,” says their son, Dashiell, “I have some concerns.”
But leave the three do, and while we’re not going to spell out what Sonny does the moment he has the joint to himself, know that it proves to be too soon to have engaged in said activity.
There’s a crude-but-not-clever streak that pervades “Me Time,” and it only increases after Huck’s over-the-top party — yes, Sonny decides to go — that sees Sonny have to try to use a bucket in the desert to take care of a bodily function. The results are worse than mixed.
For the most part, though, Sonny enjoys traveling with Huck’s younger friends aboard a bus bearing “Honk for Huck” and the hashtag #letsgethuckedup. He even earns a nickname he likes.
However, we need a little conflict, obviously, and we learn Huck has money issues, while Sonny has an apparent problem in Armando Zavala (Luis Gerardo Mendez, “Narcos: Mexico”), an eco-billionaire client of Maya’s who may want more from her than sophisticated design work. These challenges lead to the pair committing to several bad decisions, but at least they’re rebuilding their bond.
You know what they say: Bros before sensible choices.
Hart — seen of late in Netflix releases “Fatherhood” (good) and “The Man From Toronto” (not) and a star of the previous movie from a Hamburg screenplay, 2017’s so-so “Night School” — isn’t given much to work with here in terms of material, but he manages to be occasionally hilarious all the same.
And then Wahlberg (“Father Stu,” “Uncharted”) is, well, Wahlberg, but the generic aging-party boy character is well within his range.
You’d like to be able to enjoy “Me Time” for what it’s meant to be: a slice of late-summer entertainment that offers a chance to switch of the brain for an hour and a half or so and have a few laughs. Those laughs simply are too few and far between, however.
Even if you make it to the point where, possibly borrowing an idea from “Old School,” “Me Time” brings in a pop music star from back in the day for a party performance, it’s not too late to make a switch.
If you don’t, this movie may leave you with an actual hangover.
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‘ME TIME’
1.5 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for some sexual material, language and brief drug use)
Running time: 1:41
How to watch: Netflix
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