Coffee & Kareem Review

March 4, 2020 at 4:47pm
By Jason Stettner

Coffee & Kareem is a Netflix Original film that really is just purely awful. There’s nothing of real value to it, and it feels like something that is a few decades too late. It follows a foul mouthed young boy named Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh) as he reluctantly teams up with his mother’s current cop boyfriend Coffee (Ed Helms). This is due to him witnessing a murder, which was originally an attempt to scare Coffee off by having someone hardcore deal with him.

It’s an alright concept to start from I suppose, but after that it just basically becomes some sort of cartoon level of an experience. The characters are insanely over the top, the plot meanders and skips along. It’s just really stupid, it’s not at all funny and was such a waste of time. There’s nothing new, distinct or even intriguing about this one. It’s about as typical as you might expect seeing the poster for it.

There are a number of awkward scenes, and again things are just way over the top into the realms of stupid that I could barely stand it. This was especially bad when it came to Coffee, and the villains involved. I also just couldn’t stand Betty Gilpin’s Detective Watts in this as it was just way too over the top.

I didn’t find this to be particularly well shot, and the action was rather lame. I think it was aiming to have some sort of edgy humor, but it fell flat almost the entire way through. It’s silly in a sort of bad way, with a number of references that were more cringe-like than anything else. The whole back talking scenes were particularly rough to get through. It’s just a weird combination, and it didn’t work out.

On top of that the acting was rather phoned in from almost everyone involved. Well, phoned in or just really bad. The bumbling incompetence of the various characters is just too much to handle, and again so many of them came across as over-exaggerated cartoons. I think there were attempts at having the characters connect on an emotional level, but that was weak and again it felt like things just skipped along.

The Conclusion

Coffee & Kareem is a complete waste of time with nothing of value being provided by it. The characters are all entirely useless, with so many cartoonish and stupid moments being brought forward by all of them. The actions in this were awful, nothing really made sense and many moments felt as though they just skipped along. It wasn’t funny, it lacked timing and even a minor sense of strength within its jokes.

It’s mostly awkward, and feels like a film that should have been released a few decades prior. It fell flat at every single point and the most I could muster during some scenes was a sigh. From the poor dialogue, to the weak jokes and even the awful car chase scene this just was so bad. So, so bad. There are much better uses of your time, and other similar movies that at least achieve something unique or different.

Coffee & Kareem Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Content Access was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 0