Producers: John Hamburg, Kevin Hart and Bryan Smiley   Director: John Hamburg   Screenplay: John Hamburg   Cast: Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg, Regina Hall, Luis Gerardo Mendez, Jimmy O. Yang, John Amos, Anna Maria Horsford, Andrew Santino, Shira Gross, Deborah S. Craig, Naomi Ekperigin, Drew Droege, Ilia Isorelys Paulino, Tajh Mowry, Carlo Rota, Diane Delano, Che Tafari, Amentil Sledge and Henry Samuel aka Seal   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: D

“I did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of,” Sonny Fisher, the character played by Kevin Hart in John Hamburg’s crummy buddy comedy, confesses in the inevitable sappy speech of contrition he must deliver at the end.  The words apply nicely not just to Fisher’s crude adventure, but to Hart’s entire career, which has had its share of stumbles—“Me Time” being an egregiously bad example of his hysterical, noisy, if sometimes funny shtick.

Sonny is a stay-at-home dad, taking care of kids Dash (Che Tafari) and Ava (Amentil Sledge) while his wife Maya (Regina Hall) enjoys a successful career as an architect.  He’s become an active, often authoritarian volunteer at the children’s school as well as the person in charge of the household and the kids’ free time.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that he’s not also the typical American doofus male, as his pratfalls in the kitchen demonstrate.

He’s also jealous of the time Maya spends cultivating her most important client, ultra-smooth mogul Armando Zavala (Luis Gerardo Méndez), whom he suspects has an interest in her that goes beyond architectural ability.  Maya, on the other hand, has begun to feel that she’s missing out on her children’s lives.

So when Sonny’s old friend Huck Dembo (Mark Wahlberg) invites him to come out for the extravagant birthday celebration he always mounts for himself, Maya encourages him to go, although he’s reluctant to get trapped again in Huck’s wild, often dangerous, lifestyle.  But he lets himself be convinced, and Maya looks forward to reconnecting with Dash and Ava during a visit with her parents Gil (John Amos) and Connie (Anna Maria Horsford).

Needless to say, things don’t go well.  Huck is still the arrested development guy he’s always been, and there follows a series of episodes for Sonny that are supposed to be rollicking but are mostly flat and predictable—for example, he gets chased by a mountain lion obviously manufactured by CGI (a scene as palpably desperate as the prologue in which they both skydived off a cliff in batman outfits years before).  But the worst comes when he hears that Armando has interrupted Maya’s visit to her parents and, in his mind, is seducing not only his wife but his kids as well.

That leads to a long, painful episode in which, egged on by Huck, he breaks into the mogul’s house, which they just happen to be passing on their travels, and they engage in some juvenile pranks there.  Unfortunately, in the course of making their getaway, they inadvertently run over Armando’s hundred-year old turtle, which leads to the purportedly hilarious moment when a frenzied Sonny gives mouth-to-mouth to the injured critter.  The whole sequence, which like so much has both Hart and Wahlberg shouting at one another, presumably in the misguided belief that volume will add some humor to the dismal writing, has a sole saving grace in the performance of Ilia Isorelys Paulino as Thelma, the driver who gets caught up in their shenanigans.

Things are no better when the tone goes soft after Huck reveals that his life, despite his attempt to act like (in his view) a pre-domesticated George Clooney, is a mess.  He was fired from his job and is now in hock to subdued but insistent loan shark Stan Berman (Jimmy O. Yang) and his dippy female enforcer (Shira Gross).  Still, even that doesn’t stop Huck from arranging for his pal to meet his musical idol Seal, who performs at one of the parties he arranges, or going to great lengths to ensure that Sonny can replace the old van his son keeps complaining about.  Sonny also learns life lessons from a number of other down-the-line supporting characters, the insufferably gabby Alan (Andrew Santino), milquetoast Stew (Drew Droege) and devoted school crossing guard Lenore (Diane Delano)—all figures who are, if anything, even more irritating than Sonny and Huck.

It’s coming to terms with himself that leads Sonny to make that impassioned confessional speech at the school talent show he’s been tyrannically overseeing .  He’s previously lambasted a kid (Kayden Koshelev) for an insufficiently emotional rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” but now apologizes to him, and to Dash for forcing him to master the keyboard (when what the kid’s really interested in—get this—is standup comedy).  It’s a terrible scene, matched by an equally insufferable one when Sonny hastens to save Huck from servitude to Berman.

“Me Time” has the glassy, overbright look familiar from so many inferior comedies—the production design by Theresa Guleserian and cinematography by Kris Kachikis are basic at best—and Melissa Bretherton’s editing fails to impose much rhythm or energy on material and performances that are essentially undisciplined.  (Hamburg is clearly not the taskmaster Sonny is.) Jeff Cardoni’s emphatically bouncy score is what one would expect.             

It’s almost too obvious an observation to make in closing, but don’t waste your time on “Me Time,” which wastes the talents of both Hart and Wahlberg.