Summary
Kevin Hart delivers vintage material in Acting My Age, toning down the theatrics and settling back into his comfort zone, but with the benefit of maturity.
Any comedian who has a sufficiently lengthy career and a certain amount of success is going to go through ups and downs. Kevin Hart has had them in real time. You can generally chart each stage in his career through his specials: the Hollywood theatricality of his arena shows, the ill-fitting Chappelle-lite diatribes of his living room Covid special. Hart has always had a well-defined comedy persona full of exaggerated physical details, expressions, and voices, but he has been susceptible to chasing the moment a little instead of defining it himself. This isn’t true of Acting My Age, his Netflix special about – you guessed it – getting older and becoming more comfortable than ever with his reality.
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t exactly low-key in terms of production, but that’s beside the point, since the material has evolved enough to justify an orchestral opening. This isn’t a complete reinvention for Hart, but it is a return to a vintage form, to the focus on his family life and internal existential crises. But the advantages (and disadvantages) of his advancing age give the hour a wiser contour. His stage persona has become more aware of its own limitations.
It’s hard to articulate how comfortably a bit of sage wisdom complements Hart’s usual anecdotes, which ping-pong between personal family stories – Hart arranging a dinner for his nephew to come out in front of his entire family, despite the news not exactly coming as a surprise – and encounters with celebrity icons – a very funny bit about Michael Jordan’s bad dress sense and insufficiently successful children – that capture Hart’s unique position as a globally famous mainstream sensation who also got there by being very good at what he does.
You can add into this many years of stage experience. Acting My Age runs just over an hour, but it’s incredibly well paced and structured, and doesn’t lean on old, familiar material, which some long-time comedians churning out workmanlike annual hours are sometimes compelled to do. The stuff here feels fresher for its acknowledgement of how being post-40 has changed Hart’s point of view and made his physical limitations more obvious. The special doesn’t lack for energy, but it’s powered by all the things that Hart can’t do these days, which include long bits about purchasing some chemical assistance to spice up the marital bed, and a stand-out true-story highlight about needlessly challenging a former NFL running back to a foot race. The debacle left Hart in a wheelchair for six weeks.
This mode suits him down to the ground. Here, Hart feels more relatable and present than ever, and the name-dropping of major celebrities becomes funnier when it’s in the context of how all of them are dropping to bits. But the personal growth that comes with getting older creates a surprising poignancy, letting the special double as a reminder to take care of yourself, and to appreciate what you have and how far you’ve come, without feeling insufferably preachy about it. It’s a deft balancing act to slip in this kind of earnest sentiment without compromising the trademark style that has kept Hart relevant for years, in both comedy and Hollywood.
To call Acting My Age Kevin Hart’s best special would probably be considered recency bias, and is too grand a claim to make about such a humble hour. But it’s definitely his best in a while, and more importantly one that confirms Hart, even in his forties, has still got it. I’m looking forward to whatever he takes on next.
