I do not like Kevin Hart.
I find him to be obnoxious and irritating, only ever yelling and
screaming in order to get a laugh. I
sometimes like Will Ferrell, but his cinematic track record is very mixed,
often reliant on how far his avant garde improvisation makes its way onto the
screen. So I was not too enthusiastic to
realize that in a slow film week at the beginning of July that I would be
watching Get Hard, a buddy comedy
where I already don’t like half of the starring duo, and the premise raised so
many red flags that I didn’t see how this film could be any good.
Ferrell plays a stock market broker who gets sentenced to
ten years in a maximum security prison, despite protestations of his
innocence. To help him survive on the
inside, he enlists the help of his car washer (Hart) in order to train him in
being tough. Now, to the film’s credit,
the obvious racial and socioeconomic clichés at work here are addressed
head-on, as Ferrell only assumes that Hart has gone to prison based on the color
of his skin, when in fact Hart is a lower middle class man who has never been
to prison. This thankfully means that
Hart isn’t so much Ferrell’s actual savior but is only pretending to be for the
compensation he’ll receive.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that the film actually
finds funny situations to put its two leads in.
There are only two jokes repeated ad nauseam in the entire film: Ferrell
doesn’t understand black culture, and prison rape is scary. The first of these is handled with about as much
tact as you could expect, with Ferrell making an ass of himself trying to be
tough and dressing faux urban. In other
words, not usually very funny. The
second joke, though, is just never funny, treating the thought of grown men
getting raped merely as a perpetual punchline, when it is in fact a serious
real world problem that leaves physical and emotional scars. Joking about rape perpetuates rape
culture. And this film isn’t helping.
But even setting the stale and offensive jokes aside,
neither actor is given much room to comically breathe. Like I said, Ferrell’s acting strength comes
from his ability to improvise insanity, but his character is so tamely written
that we rarely get to see his improvisational strengths shine through. This may have been because Hart is not a
great improviser himself, but that only highlights the fundamental weakness of
pairing these two performers. They have
no chemistry, and the film suffers greatly for it.
It should be pretty obvious that I did not enjoy this movie. I hate the tactlessness with which it handled its
problematic subjects, I hate how the pairing of its two leads feels forced for
maximum box office draw, and I hate sitting through a supposed comedy and never
once laughing. Don’t watch Get Hard. It will leave you feeling disgusted with
cinema and those who buy tickets to this slop.
Am I too hard on Kevin Hart?
Are there redeeming qualities to his performances? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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