Kevin Hart: What Now?

Here's what matters most: You will laugh. Kevin Hart on a stage before thousands, yapping for more than an hour? I don't care what kind of miserable killjoy you are, you're going to laugh. There are two reasons you might be offended -- you may find the material either too filthy or too familiar, almost defiantly inconsequential -- but when the pipsqueak Philly motormouth builds to one of his bravura set pieces, like the one where he acts out the stiff-legged balling of a man with no kneecaps, I don't care whether you're Mike Pence depressed after putting a pet down. Your ass will laugh.

If you've never seen Hart perform stand-up, What Now? might be a revelation. The shouty little fellow from a run of popular/terrible movies is hugely, hilariously funny. He's funny the way a good pratfall is, or some cartoon you've loved since you were a kid: Even when you see the joke coming, you'll probably laugh in anticipation. He's part cartoon himself, possibly too much at times, a horndog 'fraidy-cat fast-talker whose animated walking cycle is funnier than his gag lines.

Hart's topics aren't always inspired, but he has a killer set of comedy skills: his commanding squeak and squawk; his ranting finesse; his sense of drama and escalation; his ability to root even Dada material in a regular-guy persona; his ability to make himself the joke yet still to be the likable alpha rocking a gold chain thick as a lei.

Above all else is his commitment. Hart talks at the crowd like he's confessing himself, even as much of the material could have been professionally tailored for him like Bob Hope's was.