Review of Get Hard (2015) by Kyle L — 25 Jun 2015

Teaming up the hilarious duo of Will Ferrell with Kevin Hart, Get Hard sounded like a seriously promising comedy.

Get Hard is a film with a simple gimmick to it: it has a plot regarding racial stereotypes in the context of a prison and the pairing up of two popular comedians of alternative races. Unforutnately, there is not enough strength in the screenplay to capitalise on this. The script is so built on making everything into a gay or racist joke that it fails to actually put any sense of effective dialogue into the film. The relationship between James King and Darnell Lewis is poor because the actors do not use each other. They fail to bounce comic energy off of one another, and instead the film spends the entire time with Darnell Lewis pretending to be hardcore while James King sits back and whines his way through things. Essentially, the characters handed to the cast are inappropriate attempts to find comic value in them particularly when the story around them can't find a creative outlet to capitalise on the cast.

The narrative has no room for development because the attempts at humour unfold like a series of sketches scattered throughout the film while the story in the background is a familiar and predictable narrative within the limited context of a few selective settings. It is all so heavily reliant on the talents of Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart without actually doing anything for them even though it puts them in a context where the chemistry between the actors is not enough to carry it like it was in Step Brothers. Frankly, in his directorial debut, Etan Cohen proves that he is not ready to actually structure a film properly. Despite his prior experiences writing high profile comedy films such as Tropic Thunder or Men in Black 3, he shows none of the same promise on Get Hard. There is no innovation or satirical edge within the gags, it all rests on the same old tired and familiar jokes about prison rape and African-American stereotypes which honestly left me laughing so rarely.

Part of the problem with the story is the fact that the entire film is built around developing the idea that James King will be thrown in prison and have to use Darnell Lewis' training to survive when in actuality that never happens which makes the rest of the story pointless. Of course, in an attempt to be funny Get Hard decides to throw James King in prison within the last five minutes for a different crime, but by that point viewers would have to be numb to how pathetic the story is and no longer care what happens. Essentially, the promotional material and entire story gimmick get thrown under the bus when Etan Cohen decides to push the film back onto the predictable story which is buried beneath the thinly written script. What is made too apparent is that the cast cannot save the film.

Will Ferrell is forced into a character which reduces his charisma to the most minimalist level for the entirety of Get Hard. While the man is a hilarious actor, James King is not a hilarious character because Will Ferrell has put on his whimpy white boy persona into the part for so much of the film that it allows him no opportunity to push boundaries. Because of this, his repetitive nature is little more than frustrating from the moment he first hits the screen in fake tears to the end of the dreary story that is Get Hard. Even with Kevin Hart at his side, Will Ferrell has little creative effort to put in to Get Hard which is really painful to watch. Even the racist jokes stemming from his character are too subtle. Everything about Will Ferrell in Get Hard is subtle except for the extent that he annoys viewers with his characterisation of a whimpy and unlikable protagonist, essentially leaving what little hope there is in the hand of Kevin Hart. Will Ferrell really loses sight of what makes him funny in Get Hard, and it is really depressing to watch.

Unfortunately, Kevin Hart cannot illuminate Get Hard either. The wrtiting surrounding Darnell Lewis seriously limits his demeanour. While Kevin Hart is an actor much like Eddie Murphy with his heavily over the top an energetic African-American stereotype persona about him, Get Hard essentially attempts to parody that by making Darnell Lewis into a man faking the persona to impress James King. Becuase of this, the comic potential of the film does not uses the right form of racial jokes with the character and instead limits his room to breathe. Kevin Hart plays a likable character and has his moments, but his over the top demeanour is blunted by the fact that it is forced into being a facade for a weak character. He can fake it at times, but the story shows all too often that it is artificial which ultimately reminds us that everything is just a performance. Get Hard gives Kevin Hart a terrible character with little to do, and as a result his attempts are sporadically funny at best without letting him take the material by storm and letting Will Ferrell follow on with him like the promotional material of the film suggested he would, and so he is turned into a misleading waste of talent.

Even the presence accomplished comedic stars Craig T. Nelson and Allison Brie is of no value to Get Hard because they are reduced to heavy archetypes with minimal creativity or screen time.

So Get Hard may advertise the presence of Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, but it squanders them on terrible characters in an excessively repetitive story which is as short on creativity as it is on succesful humour with the only things to offer being excess of repetition and lack of creativity amid the tame and unfunny jokes about racial stereotypes and prison rape stretched on for too long.