Cinemazlowski 'Get Hard' movie review

Mar 27, 2015

There are some comedies that walk the line so precariously between being raunchily funny and patently offensive that one has to wonder throughout, which types of people are going to love it and which people are going to be thoroughly disgusted?  The new movie “Get Hard,” starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart in a storyline that utterly destroys any sense of political correctness or decency while often being raucously funny, is a prime example.

“Get Hard” stars Will Ferrell as James King, a blueblood investments kingpin who gets charged with fraud, and Kevin Hart as Darrell, the deluxe car wash owner who KIng hires to teach him how to survive prison despite the fact he’s never been there. Along the way, the movie sets new records for scenarios involving humorous racial paranoia and homosexual panic – but just as I wondered how offensive this movie would be,  I ran into and sat with a gay male friend and two extremely conservative Catholic women friends.

Like the rest of the crowd, my friends exploded in laughter throughout the movie, although they also spent good chunks of the movie with their jaws dropped and looking at each other with stares that said, “I can’t believe I just saw that!” But the fact that those highly disparate friends all guffawed from start to finish – aside from one particularly offensive scene, mentioned below - is a good indication that a good number of adult moviegoers will handle and enjoy the movie.

The film’s opening credits offer a savvy, fast-paced contrast between the daily lives and experiences of King and Darrell, and by extension the wealthiest in LA and those who have to hustle to survive. Darrell needs $30,000 for the down payment on a new house in a better neighborhood so he can send his young daughter to a safer, better school, while King makes $28 million in a day for his investment firm.

King is also engaged to the money-chasing daughter of his boss, Marty (Craig T. Nelson), and has the world on a string until federal agents crash his engagement party and charge him with over 40 counts of fraud and embezzlement. When he refuses to cop a plea, maintaining his innocence, King is sentenced to 10 years in maximum security prison and given 30 days to get his affairs in order.

Knowing nothing about prison other than he’s guaranteed to get raped by fellow inmates, King turns to Darrell to teach him how prepare to be tough – or “get hard” – for prison. His reason for selecting Darrell is simply that he’s the one black guy he knows, and he’s so casually racist that he assumes Darrell has been to prison simply because of his race.

With King agreeing to Darrell’s request for the $30,000 he needs for his down payment, the lessons begin. These at first focus on getting King ready to take any kind of sexual assault thrown at him, but when Darrell can’t manage to bring himself to try performing bathroom-stall oral sex on a gay man Darrell introduces him to at a brunch hotspot, Darrell decides to toughen up, or “get hard,” once and for all.

And thus begins a series of outrageous training sequences, from ridiculous exercises to locking King into a fake prison cell in his own lavish mansion, to teaching him how to trash talk. He also tries to get various street gangs to agree to protect him, with disastrous results. Along the way, he also has to figure out who framed him and try to clear his name.
The stereotypes and outrageous behavior are constant, and the bathroom-stall scene goes completely over the line of bad taste, including a quick shot of male genitalia. This movie is certain to offend for those couple of minutes, and offend varying groups at other points. And there is a lot of foul language, though it kind of blends in on a movie that’s satirizing prison and the gang world.

But aside from that scene, “Get Hard” is undeniably funny in spite of itself, especially when the story broadens out to mock racial conventions and stereotypes, as well as ideas of what makes a real man, macho culture and the prison system. While it has its definite moments of offending moral conservatives, it’s already receiving a huge liberal backlash from the left for daring to mock the gay lifestyle and hip-hop/gangster rap culture.

How many movies dare to take on those liberal sacred cows of homosexuality and rap? Perhaps the true point of the movie is that all the crasser aspects of our American culture deserve to be poked fun at and taken down a peg.

Ferrell and Hart make an ace comic team that calls to mind the best team-ups of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, in “Silver Streak “ and especially “Stir Crazy.” It’s clear that Ferrell has been re-energized by working with Hart, the hottest standup comic on the planet right now and a fast-rising movie star to boot.

So if you can handle being shocked from time to time yet laughing in spite of yourself, “Get Hard” will make you laugh – even if you feel kind of ashamed when it’s over.