Get Hard

Will Ferrell stars as James King – an investment banker who is filthy rich, living in an opulent mansion and engaged to the boss’s daughter, Alissa (Alison Brie). Life is good for him, but it won’t last long.

When the FBI raids his home and arrests him for fraud, we have to question the means James used to conquer the financial world and accumulate his vast fortune. This potential Bernie Madoff is put before the only judge in the world who treats his alleged misdeeds as the real crimes they are, and he finds himself sentenced to 10 years in maximum security at San Quentin.

As you can imagine, the pampered King is worried he will be the target of every horrendous possibility you can imagine in jail, so he hires car wash company owner Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart) to teach him how to Get Hard to survive life in prison. However, Darnell is just a hardworking family man and not the former inmate King believes him to be, so the teacher uses some unorthodox methods.

Will James become tough enough to survive prison?

Get Hard is funny and shows the promise to be so much more, but everyone involved goes for the obvious, lazy jokes to elicit a quick, easy laugh instead of digging deeper.

The premise from writer/director Etan Cohen and co-writers Jay Martel and Ian Roberts is a classic situation comedy where two opposites are brought together for a common goal, and make us laugh at the mistaken impressions and differences between them. I just wish they did more with the better material.

Ferrell is fantastic as the rich man who is getting his comeuppance. Ferrell and Cohen do a great job establishing James King as the out of touch One Percenter who treats people horribly and thinks he has hit a home run in life, after starting off on third base. Everyone can cringe when he pompously makes his speeches about how hard work and superior intellect are what have gotten him to this pinnacle of success.

Then, Ferrell has the audience in stitches as the man who has no capability to understand the new world he has been thrown into. He brings a wonderful mix of terror and confusion to the audience pleasing scenes of Darnell “training” James to survive in prison as he interacts with people he never has before and develops new skills.

Yet, Cohen and team water down Get Hard by trying to force a typical, predictable plot over the comedy. You will see the big twist coming from a mile away as soon as one simple allusion to it is made, and this is what changes Get Hard. It’s no longer solely about this ridiculous situation, and those are the best moments in the movie. The need to resolve this plot consumes the final act of Get Hard, and ends the film on an unsatisfying note.

Granted, it’s hard to see the comedic side to imprisonment, but Cohen and the team also overdo it with the homophobia and talk about prison rapes. Ferrell and Hart both do so much better with the superior jokes regarding class, stereotypes, income disparity and more, and that material gives Hart a chance to be more than the straight man in this comedic duo. He could have been the voice of reason and help the audience live out their fantasy of getting a modicum of revenge on this heinous fraudster.

Get Hard gets the job done, but I feel sad for the loss of what could have been.

Get Hard is rated R for pervasive crude and sexual content and language, some graphic nudity, and drug material.