By Kyle Osborne
It goes out of its way to be offensive, it takes low brow to a new low, and if you were paid a nickel for every f-bomb and anatomical reference, you’d walk out of the theatre with enough to pay for your popcorn.
But “Get Hard” also happens to star Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart—two of the most likeable and liked guys in their business. Don’t expect snooty reviews (like this) to keep the R rated comedy from doing big business.
Ferrell is a clueless rich guy who’s racism is the kind that he doesn’t even realize he harbors—he probably only knows one black person in his universe, and that just happens to be Hart, who runs a car cleaning business in the garage of the building where Ferrell works. After being set up in a fraud scandal, Ferrell has 30 days before he has to report to prison, and he pays Hart 30thousand dollars to get him in shape for the inevitable horrors of life behind bars. The thing is, Hart is a family man who’s never had so much as a parking ticket. She how they flipped expectations there?
What we have is a comedy that, on the one hand, reinforces stereotypes, while simultaneously ensuring that the people who believe in the stereotypes are the butt of the joke. So it tries to have it both ways and, surprisingly, sometimes succeeds. It’s poor form to mention such in critics’ circles, but I think it should be noted that he preview audience with whom I saw the film laughed uproariously at times. Being honest, I laughed several times myself.
Besides the racial stuff, the comedy mainly focuses on prison rape—and if you thought the number of gags related to that topic was finite—well, this movie means to challenge your thoughts.
I have always hated the phrase I am about to use, but within movie studio circles, “Get Hard” is the kind of film where insiders smile and shrug and say, “Meh, it is what it is”
And you know what? It is.
“Get Hard” is Rated R for language, male nudity and oh, so many Prison Rape references.