Kevin Hart Ranked

Welcome to "Ranked": a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Kevin Hart-whose latest project "Me Time" is now streaming on Netflix.  

Kevin Hart's Filmography Ranked:

31.Epic Movie (F)

30.Fool's Gold (D)

29.Soul Plane (D)

28.Little Fockers (C)

27.Ride Along 2 (C)

26.Meet Dave (C)

25.The Secret Life of Pets (C)

24.Get Hard (C+)

23.The Man from Toronto (C+)

22.Night School (C+)

21.Ride Along (B-)

20.About Last Night (B-)

19.Scary Movie 4 (B-)

18.Fatherhood (B-)

17.Grudge Match (B-)

16.Scary Movie 3 (B)

15.Kevin Hart: What Now? (B)

14.The Five-Year Engagement (B)

13.Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (B)

12.The Upside (B)

11.Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (B+)

10.Central Intelligence (B+)

9.Along Came Polly (B+)

8.Death at a Funeral (B+)

7.The Wedding Ringer (B+)

6.Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain (A-)

5.Hobbs & Shaw (A-)

4.Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (A-)

3.Jumanji: The Next Level (A-)

2.Top Five (A)

1.This is the End (A)

Top Dog: This is the End (2013)

Until Game Night came along out of nowhere in 2018, This is the End felt like it was going to be the final film of its kind. A real-life major movie studio (Sony) handed Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg $20-30 million dollars and let them make an unrelentingly dark, wildly unpredictable ensemble comedy that shits all over the Hollywood machine. As nutty as its existence was at the time, that shit sounds like a full-blown fantasy scenario in the current climate. Seeing this comic masterpiece in a packed, engaged theater on back-to-back nights during its opening weekend was a god damn 100/10 dopamine rush that I wish could experience again with this or any other movie.

Bottom Feeder: Epic Movie (2007)

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were somehow able to parlay whatever contributions they made to the original Scary Movie script into a string of poorly received spoof movies that managed to last for a full half-decade until the Fox executives stopped cutting them checks for good after 2010's Vampires Suck fell flat at the box office. As someone who willingly sat through the initial trio of films they made during this time, I firmly believe that Epic Movie sits alone atop the throne of garbage they released into the world. 

As wretched as Date Movie and Meet the Spartans were, they did contain a few brief moments where something slightly-to-moderately amusing appeared on screen. The same cannot be said about Epic Movie. There's so much hopelessness and despair bubbling just underneath the aggressively goofy parody surface of Epic Movie that it really should be considered a tragedy. It was actually kind of heartbreaking to watch capable actors such as Kal Penn and Crispin Glover and some of the most reliably hilarious comics/improvisers to ever appear on screen in Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard be reduced to starring in something that treats comedy with the same reverence that most humans show ants that crawl into their living room. May future generations be blessed with the privilege of never learning that such an insultingly putrid piece of art exists.      

Most Underrated: The Wedding Ringer (2015)

The Wedding Ringer is the only vehicle that's led or co-led by Hart that showed off why he earned so many acting opportunities after being a star on the stand-up circuit. This semi-romantic buddy comedy that's in a similar vein as Wedding Crashers sees Hart's signature manic energy and emphatic joke delivery serve as the stage-setting catalyst for an absurd, often chaotic movie full of pretty strong situational comedy bits and amusing one-liners.

Most Overrated: The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

Making animated movies that are actually geared towards kids has become sort of a dying artform over the past 10-15 years, so kudos to The Secret Life of Pets for managing to check that surprisingly underserved box. The trade-off for this however is a bland story littered with largely ineffective comedy and very little heart that left me feeling completely indifferent and struggling to remember what I had just watched pretty much as soon as it was over.