Only Tiffany Haddish makes "night school" to watch

It was only last summer, in the horror and brutality of Malcolm D. Lee. The girls' trip, that Tiffany Haddish surfed like a comic Venus on the half-shell: she was so vibrant that she made every scene sing. His timing, both flexible and safe, allowed him to face the ridiculous jokes.

Haddish is now in great demand, but her glorious – and deserved – ascent does not mean that every project is worthy of her. In Night school, also directed by Lee, Haddish plays teacher Carrie to Teddy student Kevin Hart, a high school dropout trying to get a GED so he can become a stockbroker and feel worthy of his fiancée Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke). Lee has the gift of making perceptual comedies (The best holidays of the man, Brother Undercover) marked by their generosity of spirit. He is less interested in rigid stereotypes than in scratching the surface to see what quirks he can find underneath. That's true of Night school also: Teddy's classmates are at first rigid comedians – the white girl (Anne Winters) spoiled, the Latino (Al Madrigal) angry – only to make themselves known.

But for now, at least, a movie starring Kevin Hart is going to be a Kevin Hart movie: at this point, his personality is too important to be folded; his jackrabbit energy dominates. That does not leave much oxygen for Haddish, whose tormented spirit needs a lot of airspace. And yet, one way or another, she is the guiding presence of the film. Her best moment is her entrance: Carrie and Teddy meet first not in the classroom, but when their cars are stopped in the light, and Teddy is shocked by the salacious and wonderful conversation of her mouth. (The person on the other end is his mother.) These two instant enemies fight and jostle each other before Carrie de Haddish comes off, leaving Teddy – whose car has a broken windshield, among other things – in the dust . "Goodbye, boo!" She reminds him, but the tone has been given. Hart clings to the rest of the film, as if she had not already won.

This appears in the October 08, 2018 issue of TIME.