Review: 'Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain'

It seems in comedy, especially Black comedy you become the top dog when you’re able to fill arenas and make a film out of it. Kevin Hart had a surprising success last year with Laugh at My Pain so he decided to follow it up with an even bigger concert film, Let Me Explain. With Kevin Hart’s unorthodox strategy at gaining stardom he’s been pretty smart understanding his audience.  He was able to use his strategy to start an international tour and film it all. He’s taken the bull by the horns to become the current king of comedy.

Let Me Explain has a fictionalized setup of Kevin Hart constnantly bombarded by accusations at his own party. Kevin then decides he will explain himself in Madison Square Garden.  The film then smartly leaves this behind and goes with following Kevin and his friends as he tours from Canada and Europe. When the film finally gets through the intro and into the big performance at MSG it becomes a one man show. The film really isn’t breaking any new ground directing-wise in terms of filming a performer on stage doing stand-up. The material is the start here with Kevin Hart again using his personal life to make some great universal jokes about relationships, friendship, divorce and plenty of other topics.

This is a very hard movie to criticize actually. Since it's stand-up comedy it’s pretty much even more subjective than a dramatic or documentary film. If Kevin Hart’s comedy isn’t your thing this won’t be for you. It’s a hard R for language since there's cursing and use of the N-word.  The runtimeis fairly short at 75 minutes which make this like an extended hour long comedy special. The film would’ve been better served without the scripted beginning and just going with the tour footage and the performance. The scripted part seemed tacked on much like the scripted part of his last film, and it didn’t work there either. 

Let Me Explain is very much Hart’s version of Eddie Murphy’s RAW and much like that it’s not as explosively funny as the previous film in the comedian’s career. Saying that, Let Me Explain is a very funny film and does well in the pantheon of stand-up comedy performance films.  This film is putting Hart on a path of his influences Cosby, Murphy and Rock. His ability to capture the audience’s attention is key to this movie’s quality and its possible success. Let Me Explain is a good time in the theaters this holiday weekend.