Mistaken identities make for torturous comedy in The Man From Toronto

This is the sort of movie that has Kaley Cuoco show up late in the game as a previously unestablished character to do some wacky sitcom hijinks as part of a double-date misunderstanding. She’s naturally good at such things, but how much better could she have been served had anyone bothered to give her an iota of backstory? Again, we learn character traits after the fact.

As an actor, Hart generally works best either as the loudest part of an ensemble (Think Like A Man and the Jumanji sequels) or opposite a straight man with impeccable timing, like Dwayne Johnson or Ice Cube. When paired with another comedian, like Will Ferrell in Get Hard or Tiffany Haddish in Night School, they have to be able to match or surpass his energy. Harrelson, who’s more of a comedic character actor, doesn’t really fit the bill; even when he plays stone cold badasses, like Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers or Tallahassee in the Zombieland movies, there’s a satirical edge mocking the posturing. And when he does pure comedy, his tendency is to underplay. Statham, in full Spy mode, would have been a strong choice to pair with Hart. Harrelson is as effective a foil here as he is a credible Canadian, which is to say, not at all. He’s too broad to be a sounding board, and not hilariously frantic enough to push Hart further.

The director of all this is Patrick Hughes, of the Expendables 3 and The Hitman’s Bodyguard films. There’s nothing here to suggest he’s exceptional at his work, though the action is at least coherent. The movie’s most notable sequence sees Hart falling from a series of hanging light fixtures like the world’s worst Super Mario player, though he never really makes the character’s jeopardy palpable. Hart gets hit and takes pratfalls quite a bit, but his reactions to all the slapstick feel strangely low-key. Screaming is a thing he does well, usually, so turning the volume down on that is counter-intuitive.

Somehow, this was at one point intended for release in theaters, where it surely would have died. On Netflix, the bar is lower, and the algorithm may count it as a view if somebody watches part of it and then turns it off. Had it not been my job to finish, that’s certainly what I’d have done.