There are few actors working today who either have the work ethic of Kevin Hart or the ability to split his career between both stand-up and acting in crowd-pleasing fare.
With his latest film, 'The Secret Life of Pets 2', headed to cinemas on Friday, we're running down the five best scenes of Kevin Hart's career so far.
5. 'The Secret Life Of Pets' - "You know Tiny Dog?"
While 'The Secret Life Of Pets' may have borrowed - or outright lifted - some of its story beats from 'Toy Story', one thing that it had over this or any other animated movie was Kevin Hart's wild personality, which was bundled into a small, white bunny rabbit known only as Snowball. If that wasn't crazy enough, Snowball plans to lead a spartacan rebellion of discarded pets who'll take over Manhattan Island and replace the domesticated pets of the city with them. This scene just captures Hart's bursts of energy, but also how his unmistakable personality shines through even in animation.
4. 'Ride Along' - "Chitty chitty bang bang!"
'Ride Along' may have borrowed from the likes of 'Bad Boys' and, to a lesser extent, 'The Last Boyscout', but the dynamic between Kevin Hart and Ice Cube was already there for all to see. Ice Cube was coming off the back of '21 Jump Street', which had shown his ability to play a comedic role with ease and pairing him up against Kevin Hart, whose sensibilities relied more on physical comedy and unscripted ad-libs, showed that the two could blend together easily. This scene's a perfect example of the two.
3. 'Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle' - "Am I shaking? Am I breaking out?"
Much like 'Ride Along' and 'Central Intelligence', Kevin Hart worked easily with physical comedy tropes on 'Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle' and this scene is classic Hart. The setup of 'Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle' - that it's set inside a videogame - is perfect for Hart's slapstick humour. The long pay-off between revealing his character has a "cake weakness" to this scene is perfectly balanced.
2. 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' - "You keep using big words, I don't understand them, I'm gonna take them as disrespect."
This scene was entirely improvised on the day between Kevin Hart and Romany Malco, and it's by far one of the best scenes in the movie entirely - all of which is down to the incredible comedic skill of both Hart and Malco. It's literally a scene about one guy trying to buy a radio and escalates into gang violence, something about little people, and Steve Carrell rolling up into the middle of it. AIM HIGH, WILLIS! AIM HIGH!
1. 'Kevin Hart: Seriously Funny' - "My mom gave me permission to cuss one time..."
There's often parallels drawn between Kevin Hart and Eddie Murphy. Both use personal stories to their comedy and balance their standup work with their film and television work. The standup movie that launched Kevin Hart was undoubtedly 'Seriously Funny'. This sequence involving a teacher from his childhood clearly draws influence from the likes of Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious'.
