GET HARD Movie Review: This Disgraceful ‘Comedy’ Should Get Lost, Says John Shade Vick John Shade Vick March 26, 2015 Movie Reviews, Reviews I’m not spending much time on my review of GET HARD, because director Etan Cohen and his three co-screenwriters apparently didn’t spend very much time writing a movie. I obviously wasn’t expecting a comedic masterpiece. In fact, I was expecting a comedic abortion. The problem with GET HARD is that the pitiable sperm cell burdened with the movie’s shoddy, repulsive DNA never even made it to the egg, and instead impregnated the lazy minds of producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and their team of morons. This won’t deter fans of the infantile Ferrell and his motor-mouthed co-star Kevin Hart, but a bad movie is a bad movie – and GET HARD is very bad. They even bring in John Mayer for a cameo, just so Craig T. Nelson won’t be the third-biggest star on the bill; that should tell you something. The concept: A rich white banker named James (Ferrell) is sentenced to hard time for fraud, and hires black car wash owner Darnell (Hart) – whom he mistakes for a felon – to teach him how to defend himself on “the inside”. The “plot”: Darnell must help James clear his name and avoid incarceration altogether. The movie is as inane and predictable a product as one would expect from the group of guys who thought it was a good idea. The entire movie is like a 100-minute FUNNY OR DIE sketch – a fraction of a kernel of an idea, drawn out and beaten to an unholy death as Ferrell meanders through a repetitive gauntlet of racial stereotypes, cartoon violence and close encounters with gay penises. Of course, people are complaining about the racism and homophobia on display in GET HARD, and the “jokes” made at the expense of minorities and homosexuals are as plentiful as they are tasteless. However, the fact that the movie is driven by the main character’s fear of being raped is completely ignored, apparently because sexual violation of males is in some way deserved, if not a laugh riot. We have heard the “don’t drop the soap” jokes, and snickered at the characters in OFFICE SPACE when their criminal plot fails and the specter of “federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison” looms over them. GET HARD takes rape humor beyond the next level, and there are actually human beings who will laugh out loud at its malignant idiocy without even considering just how vile it really is. Though I vehemently oppose political correctness, I am trying to imagine a scenario where GET HARD is pitched with a female protagonist, and I can’t get around the visual in my head of studio executives having the producers thrown off the lot for even suggesting that putting a woman in this situation is funny. Consider the pilot episode of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: If it had depicted the physical and sexual humiliation of Piper Chapman in preparation for her inevitable rape by guards and fellow inmates, not even Jenji Kohan’s “intersectionality” could save her from the thermonuclear wrath of feminist groups and the media. Kohan has so far steered clear of that kind of “comedy”, but you never know – judging by the audience response to GET HARD, people might be up for it.
