Night School has the best opening weekend of any comedy in 2018

This year has not been a very lucrative one for comedy movies, but Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart are coming to the rescue.

Their newest film, Night School, topped the weekend box office with $28 million, per Box Office Mojo. As Deadline reports, this is the best debut for a comedy this year, scoring a comfortable lead on Blockers' $20 million opening from April. Since then, most comedies have failed to really take off, with movies like Amy Schumer's I Feel Pretty and Melissa McCarthy's Life of the Party not making much of a splash.

Night School proves once again that director Malcolm D. Lee knows how to craft a crowd-pleasing movie, as it's the best debut for a comedy since his last film, 2017's Girls Trip, per MarketWatch. This is not counting action-comedies like Deadpool 2 and romantic-comedies like Crazy Rich Asians, both of which were huge hits.

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Night School's performance is particularly impressive because the film received fairly negative reviews, but audiences didn't seem to agree with critics. According to CinemaScore, moviegoers from across the country gave Night School an average rating of A-, well above the Rotten Tomatoes grade of 30 percent. That positive word-of-mouth could bring Night School a domestic total around $70 million or higher, in which case it would beat Game Night to be the highest-grossing comedy of 2018.