By Tyler Banark

“72 Hours” first jumped out at me as a Netflix comedy featuring current SNL cast members Marcello Hernandez, Ben Marshall, and Kam Patterson in a Netflix comedy with Kevin Hart and Mason Gooding. While the latter two have been established, the boys from SNL are still looking for traction to separate themselves from the show. Hernandez has more of a leg up on the other two, as he’s been on the show since season 48, but Marshall and Patterson were rookies last year who first got noticed having other big-name comedy gigs: Please Don’t Destroy for Marshall and Kill Tony for Patterson. In terms of what the three do with “72 Hours”, it’s an alright comedy coded in Gen Z with Hart doing his usual schtick.

Hart leads the cast as Joe, a 40-year-old ad exec trying to connect to Gen Z for a project he’s working on. When he accidentally gets added to a group chat for a Miami bachelor party, he sees this as an opportunity to get his project a new perspective. What unfolds is an older guy appealing too hard to the young bucks around him in a chaotic, Hangover-inspired fashion. The script has its plot holes and has the characters as one-dimensional, but the humor worked for me mostly in part to the execution by the cast. 

Hart doesn’t do anything new and keeps to his sophomoric routine, but as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Meanwhile, the other big four (Gooding, Hernandez, Marshall, and Patterson) all bring their charms and fun to the film. Hernandez continues to prove why he’s the most talented comedian under 30 working today, and it further helps that this movie came out not long after he hosted the ESPYs. Marshall dons his awkward humor audiences have come to know him by through SNL and Please Don’t Destroy, while Patterson steals the show as the nitwit of the group (an archetype he can easily take and run circles with). As for Gooding, he’s not known for comedy but does the best he can with the role he’s got.  

Now, the movie does falter through trying too hard to appeal to Gen Z and fans of Kevin Hart. The film has a lot of moments where you can see and tell it’s a Netflix original film through the way it’s shot and how messy the script is (it did take four writers to make the script). Andy Garcia makes a cameo in this movie, and even he comes off as though he knows how bland it all is. The humor we’ve seen Hart has has become hit or miss for me, as it varies on the film, and it’s all over the place here without a doubt. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and that might be the case with seeing his movies going forward. At least this time around, he’s got a young supporting cast backing him up and bringing their own flavor to the table. While that may show signs of weakness, it saved “72 Hours” from being a full-on misfire. 

🌟 🌟 🌟 stars