MOVIE REVIEW - Get Hard

Kevin Hart and Will Farrell star in the new comedy, Get Hard, that's out this week.

Have you seen any comedy over the past few years?  This is a buddy comedy that is squarely targeted at 18 year old boys, and to them this may be one of the funniest things ever.  What they have done here is cram all the dirty words, phrases, and body part humor into one big movie with a big cast and shove it down our throats.  Truth be told there are some funny moments in this movie but it lacks any originality, and any kind of taste.

Get Hard is the story of James (Farrell).  He is a highly successful and rich investment broker who works for his soon to be father in law, Martin (Craig T. Nelson).  James is then framed for embezzlement by Martin and ends up being sentenced to 10 years in maximum security prison which is in no way ready for.  

So he hires a friend Darnell (Hart), to teach him how to cope in prison all the while James is thinking that Darnell has been to San Quentin and done time there. Which he has not.   But since Darnell needs a ton of money to buy his wife and daughter a new house he accepts the job and tries to prepare James for his prison stay in just 30 days.  And the humor is on,  and you can imagine what James is being prepared to do and not to do in prison.

All humor aside and setting aside the few laughs there are in this, Get Hard is immensely stereotypical in every regard.  No group of people, no matter what their color is is immune from the sting here.  This movie completely reinforces every stereotype there is.  This movie is a great example of Hollywood and their approach to the contemporary comedy.  They write two jokes.  And they tell them over and over again for about 2 hours.  They don't understand that the joke gets old, and a small amount of this is far greater than a ton of it. 

Get Hard is raunchy from start to finish.  The love of the F-word is in full throttle here. Also the love of talking incessantly about male body parts and what to do with them.  Plus, making fun of the gang culture in Los Angeles, that's always fun. To its credit, this movie does have a direction and does move along at a nice pace.  It's just so laden though with unoriginal thought and humor.  Farrell has crossed over into a new phase of his career. He is now the laughable straight man to his funny man's humor. That formula is a nice change over the past few movies, but it's not enough to make this legit.

Hart is a funny guy, but it's a shame for him he is not a bit more discerning of the projects he takes on. He is incredibly versatile and naturally funny, more times than not way funnier than the movies he is in. Here he is funny at times, but the scrawny script cannot save him, or this.

Get Hard. Typical March mediocre comedy.