With “Get Hard,” Cohen repeatedly places himself and his performers on a tight rope between the fire and the frying pan. In context, it makes sense that the Ferrell would cringe and groan and squirm in front of a fake penis (worn by comedian Matt Walsh) - this is one self-imposed indignity too many - but in a larger cultural context of discomfort in comedy about male-on-male sexuality, the scene can also be read as wincingly homophobic. Scared by his wife’s (Edwina Findley Dickerson) warnings that James might not survive San Quentin, Darnell convinces James to perform fellatio as a rehearsal for the real thing. It’s also how Darnell brings James to a brunch bistro that doubles as a hook-up hangout in the film’s ickiest scene. Given his own lack of knowledge about life on the inside, Darnell cobbles together a haphazard readiness plan for his new client, which is how James ends up in some hilarious scenarios: bench-pressing his much shorter convict coach, grudgingly starting fights with strangers for practice and pooping in a bucket in his own home, which he turns into a mock prison run by his gleeful domestics.Īlso Read: Kevin Hart Is Certain Justin Bieber Cried After Comedy Central Roast: ‘It Got a Little Rough’ (Video) Part of the joke is that Darnell is so square he’s called a “Cliff Huxtable-looking motherf-cker” by his criminal cousin Russell (rapper T.I.), but James can’t tell the difference between this loving family man and Idi Amin. “Oh, regular,” he sighs.ĭarnell is no hunk of toughened meat himself, but he goes along with James’ statistical “deduction” that he’s been incarcerated - one in three black men will serve time in jail, the millionaire shrugs - because he’s eager to move his daughter out of their “gangbanger school district” in South Central. The sheltered investor is more than a little disappointed when he learns there’s nothing especially “black” or thuggish about Darnell’s handshake. More satisfying are the ways “Get Hard” lampoons James’ racial assumptions. With his wiry hair and untidily strewn teeth, Ferrell fails to convince as a Reagan-worshipping Wall Street shark - an emblem of the rarefied income bracket broadly satirized by the comedy in the first act. Nelson) $28 million in a day, but seems to take no joy in sucking up money from the stock market he simply looks constipated after a day at the office. James can make his boss/future father-in-law (Craig T. He wakes up doing yoga poses and fails to stand up to his grasping fiancée ( Alison Brie) when she plans an addition to the blueprints of their already hulking manor.Īlso Read: Dwayne Johnson-Kevin Hart Comedy ‘Central Intelligence’ Gets Release Date James is as soft as a down pillow when we first meet him, crying his eyes out in an uncomfortable close-up. (The millionaire’s only familiarity with clink life comes from violent dramas.) It’s a premise that must recognize rape’s true awfulness to work - an acknowledgement that already renders most of “Get Hard” slightly more enlightened than the smug, throwaway line about how convicts meet true justice when they drop the soap.įrightened as it is of hyper-masculine men, Cohen’s comedy is really about making a man manlier. See Video: Kevin Hart Preps Will Ferrell for Prison in ‘Get Hard’ Trailer (Video)įor most of the film, Cohen and his team of screenwriters create a comedy that doesn’t punch down at victims, but finds inspiration in James’ fear of sexual assault in the pen, which may or may not be rooted in reality.

Staring down the barrel of a 10-year prison sentence for accounting shenanigans, Ferrell’s Bel Air buffoon James hires his car washer, Hart’s Darnell - who’s never been to prison, but is more than willing to take this rich clown’s money - as his prison-prep instructor. The buddy comedy arrives freighted with accusations of racism and homophobia after its world premiere at SXSW last week, with some decrying its recycling of racial stereotypes and gay panic - staples of dude-driven farces since Ferrell’s breakthrough years on “SNL.”īut there’s a daring comedy somewhere inside writer Etan Cohen’s (“Tropic Thunder”) directorial debut, which simultaneously trivializes and solemnizes the prospect of prison rape. The question is whether that baton is something anyone should have or want in the first place. You can practically see the baton that passes between Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart in the blundering bromance “Get Hard,” from last decade’s bro-comedy king to this one’s.

Will farell throwing moneymoney