There’s a scene in Get Hard that I can’t believe made it into a movie, made by smart people, in the year 2015. The premise of Get Hard is that James King (Will Ferrell) has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for embezzlement, so James hires Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart) to toughen James up in an effort to avoid prison rape. Part of this plan involves teaching James how to “suck a dick,” so the two men visit what we’re told is Los Angeles’ foremost gay brunch spot. James propositions a man and the two wind up in a bathroom stall in a scene that I’m surprised didn’t include the sound of a live studio audience yelling, “Ewwwwwwwwww,” like we’d hear when an ‘90s sitcom character would do something like accidentally drink pee.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Will Ferrell said, “Any time you’re going to do an R-rated comedy, you’re going to offend someone.” But that’s the thing, I wasn’t “offended.” To be “offended” is giving Get Hard way too much credit. I just felt sorry for Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart because they are both talented people, and they are not only subjected to this, they are now being sent out to defend it. It’s weird feeling sorry for millionaire movie stars. The whole thing made me sad.
Ferrell continued, “But that’s kind of what we do. We provoke. We prod. We also show a mirror to what’s already existing out there. We’re playing fictitious characters who are articulating some of the attitudes and misconceptions that already exist.”
Again, maybe in the deft hands of, say, a director like Adam McKay, that might be true. But, instead, Get Hard is helmed by first time director Etan Cohen (who has writing credits on Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy) who just doesn’t appear to have the experience to pull off what Ferrell is talking about in that above quote. I’m sure this was Ferrell’s intent; he’s made a career of playing characters that fit that the above description. But this is not how Get Hard turned out: They are not prodding or provoking; they are accidentally endorsing.
Beyond that, one of the most frustrating things about Get Hard is knowing that Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart would actually be a pretty great comedy duo in a good movie. Speaking of: Kevin Hart desperately needs a good movie. Here’s a human dynamo that has been failed time and time again by his projects. I have no idea of the inner workings of what he’s been offered and what he’s turned down, but one of these days the stars have to align for him, right? Anyway, Hart deserves better. Ferrell deserves better. This team deserves better. It’s actually remarkable that a movie with both of these actors can be this bad.
I suspect this movie was supposed to be a takedown of the one percent. Will Ferrell’s James King is a man who lives in excess and has a fiancé (Alison Brie) who demands even more excess. But even that doesn’t work, because James is innocent, so here’s this poor rich fella being wrongfully accused. Of course, instead of trying to prove his innocence, he instead spends almost all of his last 30 days as a free man learning how to store a shiv in his anus. The plot surrounding who framed James is so obvious that it becomes its own joke in a, “You’re a financial genius, but you are dumb,” kind of way, a payoff that’s totally not worth the time.
After Get Hard’s premiere at South by Southwest, during a post-film Q&A with Cohen, an audience member accused the film of racism. Ferrell’s James King does assume that Kevin Hart’s Darnell Lewis has been to prison simply because Darnell is African American, which is what leads to James hiring Darnell for “training.” Yes, that is racist, but that’s a character trait and any film has the right to give its characters bad traits. But, again, Cohen just doesn’t seem experienced enough to pull this all off in a coherent way. On this front — it’s bad when your movie is fighting accusations on multiple fronts — I at least can tell what Cohen was trying to do. Again, the whole thing just makes me sad.
My screening of the film was mostly filled with people who had won tickets and were happy to be seeing a free movie. There was polite laughter from time to time, but not the amount you’d expect from a Will Ferrell-Kevin Hart movie. (I had plenty of time to monitor this situation because I spent virtually zero time laughing.) Get Hard is a movie that wants to be perverse so badly — and maybe everyone involved has convinced themselves that they’ve pulled it off — but the delicate line necessary has scribble marks all over it. Get Hard is sad scribble.
Mike Ryan has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
