Get Hard: Movie Review

Writer Etan Cohen has a gift for sneaking plenty of intelligence in his screenplays for dumb comedies like “Idiocracy” and “Tropic Thunder”. That is why it’s a shame that his latest effort “Get Hard”(which he makes his feature film directorial debut), lacks not only in freshness but in laughs as well. This is nothing more than a series of stereotype and erection jokes that stars Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart can’t even save (not without a lack of trying).

James King (Ferrell) has been sentenced to 10 years in maximum security prison for fraud, even though he is actually innocent. Knowing that he is not equipped to survive prison, James offers to pay his car detailer Darnell (Hart), thirty-thousand dollars to train him on how to be hard in prison. This leads to a serious of ethnic and prison rape jokes that we have heard countless times before. I won’t say that I didn’t laugh at all because there are a few chuckles now and then. How can there not be with these two comic vets playing off each other, but the writing is just so weak. Not that is matters but within the first ten minutes of Get Hard, we can already figure out who the real bad guy is.

I have little doubt that “Get Hard” will be a huge financial success. Hart continues to prove that he can get people to come out in droves no matter how unfunny his films are (looking at you “Ride Along”). Let’s hope that these two stars have better luck with future projects.

By: Marc Ferman