ME TIME (2022)

ME TIME is a crude comedy on Netflix about a stay-at-home dad who becomes convinced by his wife and neighbors he has no life outside of his family, so he finally agrees to go to his estranged best friend’s 44th birthday party, but his best friend is a hedonistic slob. ME TIME tells a rather vapid, wandering, unfunny story, filled with lots of foul language, crude sexual content and self-gratification.

The contrived buddy comedy, ME TIME, suffers most from the fact that it is seldom funny and seems unable to decide what it is, where it’s going, and where it should end up.

Stay-at-home dad Sonny becomes convinced by his confused, and often depraved, neighbors that he has no life outside of his children. Asked by 4his estranged best friend, Huck, to come to his 44th birthday party, he declines believing that they have drifted apart and into two separate lives. However, Sonny decides he needs some time for himself. His wife encourages him to go to Huck’s party while she takes the kids to her parents’ house. After making several failed attempts at relaxing on his own, Sonny does so.

Finding that Huck is financing his own birthday bash with money he doesn’t have, Sonny decides to help his friend out of a bad situation. Could Sonny’s “Me Time” actually help reunite him and his former best friend while also making him a better father?

Despite lead actor and producer Kevin Hart’s efforts, ME TIME remains heartless in one of the worst ways. It lacks a compelling story, direction, themes, and can’t decide what it is at its core. The plot wanders from a rather bland family sitcom to a CADDYSHACK-esque golf party outing, then from a buddy comedy with an absurd antagonist to an underdog dad ending reminiscent of the much funnier movie DADDY DAY CARE.

Production values are generally poor. Sonny is a fairly likable father figure until we see that his idea of time for himself can be reduced to masturbating to internet porn, golf, eating baby back ribs, and reluctantly visiting a strip club. It is somewhat restored when his friend Huck says he would kill for his life because he is in many ways a good father with a stable and loving family. It is further restored when Sonny helps Huck out of his money trouble. It drops again as he tries to force his son into his personality mold and tries to insult a supposed rival with childish acts of debauchery. Perhaps it jumps back up a bit when he comes up with a plan to earn the money to pay off Huck’s debts instead of bankrupting his family, but by then many if not most viewers will have lost interest. There are so many disconnected dry spots throughout, and the movie stumbles along to a contrived conclusion largely because the movie can’t decide what it is or ought to be. It is as if the filmmakers picked some good themes from other more focused comedies and tried to mash these all together and see what results. The result is that the movie succeeds at almost nothing and fails in regards to the basic requirement for a comedy – to be funny.

To top it all off, ME TIME is full of problematic content, from language to nudity. It has over than 100 obscenities and profanities, including five “f” words and eight strong profanities. Derogatory use of male and female anatomy is common as well as scatological interjections. A man is seen completely nude from the back and his censored nude photo is seen on the hood of a huge bus. ME TIME also has strong sexual content, including references to bestiality. In addition, multiple homosexual characters are portrayed alternatively with ridicule or favor, and the father character endorses sex change operations while talking to his daughter. “It’s complicated,” he adds.

ME TIME has a very strong hedonistic, pagan worldview where characters do most everything from the standpoint of selfishness and self-gratification. The movie’s biggest message seems to be giving people their space, being accepting and inclusive, and enjoying life, though having a family and having children are promoted.