Fatherhood: Kevin Hart Struggles with Grief, Baby… and Collapsible Strollers
By Liam Lacey
Rating: C+
Comedian Kevin Hart gets to show his sensitive side in Fatherhood, inspired by Matt Longelin’s best-selling 2011 memoir, Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Love and Loss, the story of a young widower struggling with grief and single parenthood.
The family drama is presented by the Obamas, as part of their multi-year production deal with Netflix, a series that has already produced a couple of Academy Award–nominated documentaries, the Oscar-winning American Factory and Crip Camp. As a middlebrow tear-jerker, Fatherhood has zero chance of joining that list, though as 19th century humourist Bill Nye once said of the music of Richard Wagner, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
The film’s first act cuts between Matthew at a funeral for his beloved wife, Liz (Deborah Ayorinde) making an inept eulogy and fending off clumsy condolences from friends and family, amidst flashbacks of Liz’s pregnancy and sudden death.
Writer/director Paul Weitz (American Pie, About A Boy) and co-writer Dana Stephens Weitz manage to sift some humour into almost every scene to keep the tragedy at arm’s length. They’re aided by a strong support cast, with Alfre Woodard as Matthew’s stern and protective mother-in-law, Paul Reiser as Matthew’s awkwardly empathetic boss, with Lil Rel Howery (Get Out) and Anthony Carrigan (Barry) as Matthew’s buddies and assistant child-raisers.
While the usually energetic Hart is in mostly in a serious-movie straitjacket here, he gets to display his familiar irascible Everyman persona in the childcare scenes. Any adult who has been in the vicinity of babies can re-experience the joys of colicky midnights, diaper explosions, and the Rubik’s Cube design of collapsible strollers and baby car seats.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
When the movie abandons the memoir’s story of grief and joy it becomes less interesting. Matthew’s daughter Maddy (Melody Hurd, appropriately feisty and adorable) suddenly jumps ahead a few years to become school aged. While facing new challenges (hair-braiding, work travel), Matthew finds himself in a budding relationship with yet another woman named Liz (DeWanda Wise), who is funny, warm, sincere, and child-loving. Naturally, it takes an extended breakup before the relationship-shy Matthew sees she’s exactly what he and Maddy need.
Within this predictable redemption arc, there’s one peculiar subplot about how Matthew sticks up for his daughter when, in defiance of her Catholic school’s dress code, she insists on wearing slacks and boys’ underwear with her school uniform. Is this because she was raised around men?
More likely, Matthew’s support for his daughter’s gender non-conforming behaviour is intended as a sop to Hart’s critics, following the controversy when he refused to host the 2019 Oscars after being accused of an insincere apology for past homophobic tweets. Can anyone possibly doubt that seeing Hart wearing a plaid Catholic schoolgirl kilt will make everything better?
Fatherhood. Directed by Paul Weitz. Starring Kevin Hart, Alfre Woodward, Lil Rel Howery, Melody Hurd, Anthony Carrigan, Paul Reiser, and DeWanda Wise. Available on Netflix from June 18.