COMING UP LAME
Black-white comedy is just dumb
‘Get Hard” isn’t edgy enough to be offensive or witty enough to be challenging. As evidenced by the lame grade school joke of a title, it’s just lazy, empty-headed and moronic, and makes “The Interview” look like genius by comparison.
Will Ferrell plays James King, an obnoxiously rich stockbroker about to marry the boss’ daughter (Alison Brie) and make partner in his company.
Then a trumped-up charge of swindling investors hits King, resulting in 10 years in San Quentin. Enter Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart), a struggling family man who works in the garage of King’s building. Lewis needs money to start a car-wash company. So for a fee, he coaches a terrified King on how to survive being beaten up, forced to partake in gay sex and get gang-initiated. Except Lewis has never actually been to prison. But that doesn’t matter to King, who just wants to avoid becoming “somebody’s bitch.”
“Trading Places” this ain’t, much less “Stir Crazy.” But there is a scene at an L.A. restaurant with an all-gay clientele that would have fit into a bad ’80s movie.
Cohen cowrote the terrific “Tropic Thunder,” and clearly can do envelopepushing stuff. But while “Get Hard” pokes fun at racist attitudes, there’s no ingenuity or zing to King’s discomfort around anyone who doesn’t look like he does.
Ferrell is overindulgent in his recent films, as anyone who saw “Anchorman 2” and the interminable “Casa de Mi Padre” knows. He’s now best in short-form skits on his Funny or Die website. He can still turn his doughy face into mush — and unfortunately likes showing off his doughy body — but mostly this is too much of an awful thing.
Hart comes off better. He delivers the movie’s liveliest scene when his character tries to prepare King for the types of people he might encounter in a prison yard. Lewis jumps between imitations of jail stereotypes — a Puerto Rican gang member, a gangsta, a guy King thinks is a woman — arguing with himself as he’s running around. It’s like something a young Robin Williams might have done, and it’s the only time “Get Hard” makes it over its low bar of a goal.