I suppose I could do my job and review the new film GET HARD, starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, as a film critic, which I'm paid to do. Or I could deputize myself and become a member of the morality police and judge the content of the film and ignore the rest of it, which seems beside the point, since that doesn't really give you, the potential audience member, a clue whether this might be a film you'd enjoy or not. But let's quickly do the morality thing, just for a second, because it's easier to defuse than you might think.
Is GET HARD racist? For sure, certain characters in the film are supposed to be racist, including Will Ferrell's millionaire character James King, who is on the verge of getting married to Alissa (Alison Brie), the daughter of his boss Martin (Craig T. Nelson). King is set up to take the fall for some illegal trading, and after he is convicted, he's given 30 days to get his affairs in order and report to prison. Thinking that he's the last guy who belongs in prison, he hires his office car wash attendant Darnell Lewis (Hart) to teach him to get "prison ready," which reduces itself during the course of the film to the equivalent of turning a white dude into a black dude, in James' eyes.
So is that racist? Certainly James is a bit prejudiced—he assumes Darnell has been to prison by playing the law of averages. But Darnell (who has, in fact, never been to prison) uses James' stereotyping to his advantage. It's not a sophisticated take on race and racial profiling, but it's a start. As the film goes on, there's something of an awakening in James that makes him appreciate black culture. Again, he doesn't do so in the most subtle ways, but there certain seems to be a humorous attempt made to right his previous wrongs.
If a lot of this storyline sounds familiar, make no mistake, GET HARD is a whole lot like TRADING PLACES, even more so when we discover who has been pulling the strings to land James in jail. In a session of getting him prison-ready with Darnell's cousin (played by T.I.), he teaches the former prisoner how to become a fairly savvy online trader. Meanwhile, Darnell is planning on using the money he gets from James to start up his own business. And while some of the racial jokes might not be in the best taste (or even funny), they hardly qualify as racist.
Next question: Is GET HARD homophobic? That's a tougher question because never in my wildest thoughts did I ever equate getting raped in prison with gay behavior (make all the jokes you want, but if you disagree: congratulations, you'll probably love this movie). That being said, prison rape jokes aren't the only forms of sketchy sex jokes in the film.
There's a sequence in which Darnell suggests that James perform oral sex on another man to prepare him for the inevitable, so they head to a gay bar, pick up a man (Matt Walsh from "Veep"), take him into the bathroom, and for what seems like an eternity, James attempts to do the deed, leading to a lot of dry heaving, crying, and screaming without actually going through with it. Admittedly, the crowd I saw the film with was laughing hysterically for this sequence, mostly at the sight of a flaccid penis up against Ferrell's face. But the scene leaves you feeling really bizarre, like you're watching a film from the '70s or '80s, when sensitivity to such things seemed less of any issue. But is first-time director and co-screenwriter Etan Cohen (who co-wrote IDIOCRACY and TROPIC THUNDER) mocking James by casting him as a homophobe as well as a bigot? Or are the filmmakers truly that clueless that this material might offend huge groups of people?
Whether you laugh you shoes off or sit there in silence, the sad truth about Get Hard isn't that its jokes might offend you morally; it's that the film isn't that funny even when it sticks to more conventional humor. When the visual gag that Ferrell is about three feet taller than Hart is your best running joke, you have a problem. Everyone in the film is overplaying their parts, beginning with Brie and Nelson, who are so broadly doing the spoiled little rich girl/doting father routine that they practically performing as silent film actors. Hart has never been a nuanced actor, but I've always managed to find some value in his performances. But with him doing three or four movies per year lately, you can spot when even he thinks the material is weak and overcompensates with improvisation to make up the difference. The results, needless to say, are mixed.
And then there's the veteran Ferrell, who seems to have a hit a wall with GET HARD. Although I've probably noticed signs of this before. I feel like I know all of Ferrell's comedy tricks now, and where there might have been a time when he would go out of his way to come up with a new batch to add to the old friends with each new movie, in GET HARD, there's simply nothing new. The crying, the affected voices, the posturing, the jokes at the expense of his pasty white skin and less-than-defined body—we've seen these things so many times before, and they can still be funny. But none of it feels original in this context. And in a comedy that deals with race, each actor needs to try on a new skin. When a broad comedy can't even get the basics right, the problem is much worse than tasteless or offensive jokes.
