Fatherhood: A hit way out of the park

Movie Review: Fatherhood (2021) on Netflix

Oh, wow! I'm loving Kevin Hart in this serious modern drama, Fatherhood. This puts him in the legions of some of the greats.

Hart plays Matt Logelin, a young husband who loses his childbearing wife Liz (Deborah Ayorinde) right after childbirth and is left to raise his new daughter Mandy (Melody Hurd) on his own. It's not as if he doesn't have offers of help, but he owes it to his wife's memory to get it right and he owes it to his own father not being there for him to be there for Mandy. Being there for Matt are a host of great role models of friends and family, including Liz's mother Marion (Alfre Woodard) and dad Mike (Frankie Faison), Matt's mother Anna (Thedra Porter), and close friends Jordan (Lil Rel Howery) and Oscar (Anthony Carrigan). Then friends try to link Matt up with an eligible single woman at a birthday party, Lizzie (DeWanda Wise), whom Matt finds fun and attractive but decides is a distraction in his relationship with Mandy. And then there's Matt's job in IT, where he's quite the up and coming success but being a new dad makes for complications. How can he do it all?

Now, there is plenty of humor in this movie. And that's been Kevin Hart's main ploy as an actor. But in Fatherhood, he gets to stretch his muscles and man, does he stretch. This is a great part for Hart! He plays perfectly opposite little Melody Hurd as his daughter and he matches beat for beat with the seasoned Alfre Woodard. Where he seems most natural is with DeWanda Wise, who is totally in tune with Hurd, too. 

Fatherhood was perfect for play on Father's Day, but it's great viewing for anytime of the year. It hits all the right emotional strings, light plinks of humor, heavy tones of sentimentality, deep melodies of sadness, and great sweeping rhythms of joy. Play it for the whole family, because everyone can get the various themes and love the characters. I'd rate Fatherhood A^^ for A hit way out of the park.