Review of GET HARD: Offensively Outrageous

April 30, 2015

James King is a very wealthy stockbroker who gets wrongly convicted for fraud. Desperately scared of being molested in prison, he thought of hiring the black guy who ran the nearby car wash to harden him up so he can survive behind bars. Against James' perceived statistics though, Darnell never spent a day in prison himself! From there, the film goes through every conceivable racist, misogynistic, or homophobic stereotype jokes they can come up with, until the inevitably predictable ending.

Liking a satiric comedy film that feeds on these politically-incorrect, potentially offensive jokes is a matter of personal taste. I do not belong to any of the demographic the film trained its comic claws on, so I was not personally offended by the crass humor. I found most of the jokes flat and unfunny, only mildly amusing at best.

Maybe it does not help that I never really liked the comedy style of Will Ferrell even from way back. The film opens with the unfortunate scene of Ferrell bawling so fakely it set a decidedly mediocre tone for the rest of the film. His delivery of jokes were not effective, or his material itself was not written very well. Most of his "funny" scenes had no words, with just his awkward body movement or stupid facial expressions doing the "fish out of water" job better.

I only knew Kevin Hart from his recent film which was showed only earlier this year, "The Wedding Ringers". There, Hart effectively achieved chemistry with his partner Josh Gad and that that made the film really work well. Here though, Hart does not really gel very well with Ferrell. I liked Hart's character better, but the performance of this up and coming black comedian was hampered by the limitations of the script.

So if you like your comedies brash, loud and peppered generously with filthy language, then "Get Hard" is the film for you. For those of you who prefer more cerebral comedies then it would be okay to give it a pass. 4/10.