Kevin Hart’s failed sitcom star vehicle…
Looking back on the 2010s, it is no small argument to say that one of the biggest breakout stars of that decade was stand-up comedian and actor Kevin Hart. After beginning the decade with small roles in Little Fockers (2010), The Five-Year Engagement (2012) and This Is The End (2013), Hart broke through in 2014 starring alongside Ice Cube in the buddy comedy Ride Along. The film set an opening weekend box office record for a January film release, eventually grossing $153 million against a $25 million budget. Following Ride Along, Hart found further commercial success with critical failures The Wedding Ringer and Get Hard before partnering with action star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in 2016 action-comedy Central Intelligence. This new partnership proved to be successful, grossing $217 million against a $50 million budget, so successful that the two would re-team for 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Despite opening alongside Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the film surprised critics and audiences, earning positive notices and $962 million at the box office. This trick would be repeated two years later as Kevin Hart ended the decade with an $800 million box-office gross for Jumanji: The Next Level. Now that I’ve explained all the man’s recent successes, it is now time to take you back to an earlier, less successful part of Kevin Hart’s career.
After making his on-screen debut in the 2002 direct-to-video crime comedy Paper Soldiers(a film produced by Jay-Z’s Roc-a-Fella Records), and appearing in the short-lived Judd Apatow sitcom Undeclared, Kevin Hart would often be seen in supporting or cameo roles in films throughout the mid-2000s including Scary Movie 3 and 4, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Along Came Polly, In The Mix and Soul Plane.
Around this time, Hart was approached by television network ABC to star in his own multi-camera sitcom. The sitcom, created by Stephen Engel and David Zuckerman, would air as a mid-season replacement and become the latest part of the channel’s faltering revival of the TGIF programming block that had been such a hit in the ’80s and ’90s. This sitcom would eventually become known as The Big House and would air alongside fellow classic sitcoms George Lopez, Hope & Faith, Life With Bonnie and Married to the Kellys.
In The Big House, Kevin Hart plays Kevin Hart, a rich, pampered college student who goes to school in Los Angeles. However, when his father is sent to prison for embezzlement. Kevin is forced to move to Philadelphia to live with his working-class aunt, uncle and cousins. If that plot sounds awfully familiar to you, you’re not going crazy. The main premise of The Big House is a complete reversal of the main premise of 1990’s Will Smith star vehicle and modern-day meme machine The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In this case, instead of the poor Philadelphia kid moving to live with his rich aunt and uncle in Bel Air, the L.A. rich kid moves to Philly to live with his working-class aunt and uncle. It probably didn’t help that series co-creator David Zuckerman, of Family Guy, King of the Hill and Wilfred producer fame, had previously served as writer and producer for The Fresh Prince between 1993 and 1995. Starring alongside Kevin Hart in this new endeavour into comedy would be Keith David (Clarence), Arnetia Walker (Tina), Faizon Love (Warren), Yvette Nicole Brown (Eartha) and Aaron Grady (C.J.). The series was set to hit the airway in April 2004.
The Big House would air its first episode on Friday 2nd April 2004. The Big House would air its last episode on Friday 30th April 2004. The series was cancelled by ABC after just 6 episodes. What happened to the show to lead to this abrupt end? Damning critical reviews? Pathetic TV ratings? Well if you ask Kevin Hart, he has the answer. In a 2017 interview with Shadow And Act when asked about how he deals with rejection, Hart said:
“That’s the f***ed up thing about acting: you need thick skin…My show ‘The Big House’ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‘The Big House.’ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‘Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.’ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.” (‘Interview: Kevin Hart Talks ‘About Last Night,’ Being the ‘It Guy,’ and More (Opens Tomorrow)’, Shadow And Act, 20th April 2017)
According to this quote, The Big House was doomed from the beginning, suffering the unenviable fate of being cancelled before a single episode had aired. Therefore, the cast and crew had to go out and fulfil the original 6 episode order from ABC, knowing that the show was not going to be a success no matter what they did.
Initial critical reviews of The Big House were mixed. A negative review from Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik began ‘Remember NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel Air with Will Smith? Well, ABC’s new sitcom, The Big House, is The Fresh Prince in reverse. And it couldn’t be more obvious – or less imaginative.’ (Silly stereotypes pack ‘Big House’, Baltimore Sun, 3rd April 2004). On a more positive note, the Los Angeles Times critic Robert Lloyd summed the show up as ‘a good-natured, fairly well-behaved, determinedly old-fashioned sitcom — almost too much so at times — one that you would not hesitate to take home to meet your parents if they can tolerate the odd sex joke.’ (Enjoying life in ‘The Big House’, Los Angeles Times, 8th April 2004)
After personally watching all 6 episodes, I can honestly say that The Big House is just okay. There isn’t anything particularly good or bad about the show. The cast try their best and mostly give good performances. There is particularly a good chemistry to be found between Kevin Hart and Faizon Love, who plays Hart’s cousin and basement roommate Warren, as Warren often serves as Kevin’s source of guidance while adjusting to his new life in Philadelphia and as Kevin’s accomplice in his many schemes. I do not agree with those critics that wrote off the show as a loud and brash sitcom. While the show’s introduction to the Cleveland family involves them yelling Kevin’s name while trying to find him in an airport after his arrival in LA, this does not serve as a true representation of the family for the rest of the show’s six episodes. Instead, the Clevelands are written as traditionalists: a close-knit Christian family who clash with the more individualist Kevin.
While I do disagree with some aspects of the critical reviews written about The Big House in 2004, there is one point that rings true both from the negative review of David Zurawik and the positive review of Robert Lloyd upon personally reviewing the show: The Big House, as a sitcom, is too safe. While the show did produce some smiles and a couple of chuckles from this particular reviewer, the majority of the show left me rather dry. The show’s humour is fairly broad across the board. Much of the jokes come from the culture clash between rich kid Kevin and his working-class relatives, a topic that worked effectively in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air but doesn’t work here. On the subject of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, once you watch all 6 episodes of The Big House, you can easily see where comparisons can be made between the latter and the former, even going beyond the show’s basic premise. Aside from the culture clash, there are plenty of obvious jokes aimed at Kevin Hart’s short stature and the size of Faizon Love’s Warren.
The show’s individual episodes are also fairly formulaic. The first two episodes involve Kevin lying about himself in order to impress a girl, while there are also episodes about Uncle Clarence and Aunt Tina’s wedding anniversary and Kevin’s birthday, where he has to choose between spending it with his family or going out with his friends. The majority of episodes also follow the traditional sitcom structure of problem-escalation-resolution, with Kevin causing a problem for the family before having to fix it by the episode’s end. All in all, this reviewer feels that even if the The Big House hadn’t suffered the unfortunate fate of being cancelled before a single episode had aired, the show would not have been able to last more than a couple of seasons at best.
The Big House currently holds a 6.1/10 user rating on IMDb from 80 reviews but possesses a 92% approval rating on Google. In 2015, presumably to coincide with Kevin Hart’s recent success, the first and only series of The Big House was released on DVD, 11 years after its original airing. If you don’t want to go to all that trouble to watch it, the entire series is available on YouTube, either in full compilation form or as individual episodes.
Would I watch The Big House again? Probably not. Was I able to sit through 6 episodes of the show with turning it off? Yes. Would I recommend it? I personally wouldn’t recommend it, but through researching the show, I found that there is an audience out there and far worse sitcoms have received more episodes. If you do want to watch to check out a forgotten footnote from Kevin Hart’s early career, then go ahead and check it out for yourself. It may not be The Fresh Prince, but The Big House is by no means a pauper of a sitcom.
forgotten-media.com 