Get Hard | Movie Review

“Get Hard” stars Will Ferrell as millionaire James King. This is a guy with a perfect life. He’s rich, arrogant, successful, and he even has a gorgeous fiancé (the always welcome Alison Brie). It all goes south when James is convicted of fraud and sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin.

Desperate to save his ass, literally, King hires the only thug he knows in Darnell (Kevin Hart), the owner of his local car wash service. Of course, James only believes he is a thug because he happens to be black, but hey, semantics. Darnell decides to play up the mistaken identity and finally earn enough capital for a solid down payment on a home that will finally get his family out of South Central.

If you thought “Get Hard” was going to be a socially charged, intelligent take on the racial divide…well what were you thinking? This is Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. This is film aimed squarely at prison rape humor, homophobic cracks, racial mocking. Director Etan Cohen has no intentions of crafting anything deep or meaningful here, this is strictly for the yucks.

This would be all well and good if “Get Hard” were actually funny. It is not. To have a film starring two of the most talented comedians working today and basically lunging after every easy jab possible is nothing short of a movie crime, and Ferrell is the worst offender. Playing off of his OBLIVIOUS LOUD WHITE GUY persona that he has carefully perfected over the years, Ferrell gives us nothing more than several bland attempts at cutting edge humor.

For example, Darnell coaxes James into oral sex on a man, essentially to prepare him for the inevitable. Instead of an uproarious scene that leads to clever and biting humor where Ferrell toys with the options, we basically get Will Ferrell making Ron Burgundy faces at an appendage for a ludicrous amount of running time. This isn’t scathing humor, it is sad pandering and it simply does not work.

Kevin Hart at least gives it a go, playing it fairly straight and giving his best attempt to create an actual character. Unfortunately, there is so little story and even less chemistry with his co-star that all of his attempts are in vein, and he is left making lame reactionary faces to his co-star’s even lamer antics.

The story itself is extremely clunky, the film serving more as a series of gags than any semblance of an actual film. The 30 days leading up to incarceration are basically an excuse to jam every prison idea and rap song into one incoherent product. The final act of “Get Hard” is so rushed and absurd that you have to wonder if the filmmakers realized it wasn’t working and they all just wanted to go home. I know I did.

For all the yammering about “Get Hard” being too racist or too homophobic, much of the chatter that has been lost is that it just isn’t funny. By the end of the film, I personally felt like I had been serving time myself.

Starring Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart
Written by Jay Martel, Ian Roberts, Etan Cohen
Directed by Etan Cohen

 

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider