Was prison rape even funny to begin with? The team behind Get Hard seems to think it’s the funniest thing in the world, maybe the only thing that’s ever been funny. A few jokes here and there are to be expected—though it’ll be nice, not to mention not gross, when we no longer delight at someone’s fear of sexual assault—but it’s the punchline of every single joke. Sometimes it is its own drawn-out, meandering joke that has no punchline, an approach that would have sucked the comedic value out of any premise let alone one so questionable to begin with. But here we are with Get Hard, a movie that seems to think the only thing funnier than prison rape itself is making a joke that’s not about prison rape also be about prison rape.
Kevin Hart plays Darnell, a down on his luck family man who desperately wants to raise his young daughter in a better school district. Meanwhile, James (Will Ferrell) is a businessman with a trophy fiancée, a fresh promotion and lots of money. When James is falsely convicted of fraud, he racistly assumes that Darnell, who owns a car cleaning business that operates in the office garage, has been imprisoned himself and asks the squeaky clean aspiring entrepreneur to be his prison survival coach, offering enough money for the down payment on a new home. To get the money he needs to make a new life for himself, Darnell must now embody James’ preconceived notions about black culture.
As far as throwaway plots go, it’s not awful, and could have been an effective springboard for subversion of stereotypes, the intersection of wealth and race, with plenty of room for male insecurity and inspired crudeness. To work, all it had to be was funny, and co-writer/director Etan Cohen is no stranger to successfully edgy comedy, having co-written Tropic Thunder, Idiocracy and Beavis & Butthead. Cohen occasionally flirts with transgressive ideas only to end in familiar or unfunny territory. Familiar premises are rarely expanded on, the commentary on corporate America feels borrowed from another movie, and the punchline to a dick joke is just seeing a literal dick.
Will Ferrell does what Will Ferrell does, and it’s occasionally funny, though playing the aloof white guy in fish out of water comedies has rarely been a sign of good things to come. More than anything, this is the Kevin Hart show, and what big belly laughs Get Hard has are completely thanks to him. We’ve known he’s a gifted stand-up for some time and he has the makings of a terrific movie star, but his delivery and scene-stealing charisma belong in far better movies than what he’s been given.
The world is ready for a movie that is crass, cathartic and unapologetically confrontational in its treatment of race and class, which is what Get Hard wants desperately to be, the Trading Places of a new generation. But instead of an effectively transgressive film that blends lowbrow jabs and high-minded commentary without letting either quality get in the other’s way, what we get is a throwaway reaction-as-comedy flick that drags its talented lead down at a time when his star should be rising.
Playing this week
Cinderella
The Divergent Series: Insurgent
Do You Believe?
Focus
Furious 7
The Gunman
Home
It Follows
Kingsmen: The Secret Service
Mr. Turner
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213
