Who Has the Winter's Most Soulless Streaming Movie: Kevin Hart or Mark Wahlberg?

By Dustin Rowles | Film | November 6, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | November 6, 2023 |

When people talk about soulless, algorithmically created streaming films, we should be able to point to specific examples. Here are two, which come from actors who have sold their souls to the algorithm in recent years: Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg. Not that they had much of a soul to begin with.

Kevin Hart has been churning out algorithm detritus for Netflix for a few years now. Even the most passionate Kevin Hart fans, however, would be hard-pressed to remember Fatherhood, The Man from Toronto, or Me Time. The byline for the review suggests that I have actually seen Man from Toronto, but that’s news to me.

The latest is Lift, with a decent cast that includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Sam Worthing …zzzzzz. Where was I? Oh yes. In Lift, Kevin Hart and his team have to steal half a billion in gold from a plane while it’s in the air. Kevin Hart is the Danny Ocean of the crew, and that’s how you know this movie is terrible.

Apple TV has been better about algorithm chaff, but not here with The Family Plan, which looks like a Netflix movie. Mark Wahlberg (who was in Me Time with Hart) stars alongside Michelle Monaghan. There have been a couple of True Lies reboots lately: The official True Lies series on TV, and Fubar, the unofficial one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger on Netflix. Family Plan is like True Lies, only it involves the entire family, which is … never mind. It’s just like True Lies.

The Family Plan comes from the director of nine episodes of Ballers. It streams on Apple TV in December. Lift premieres on Netflix in January.