If you’re black, gay or in jail, get right away from Get Hard

REVIEW: If Will Ferrell’s new comedy Get Hard was a stand-up routine, it would be the same three jokes looped for 100 minutes. He should know better.

Get Hard (MA15+)

Director : Etan Cohen (feature debut)

Starring : Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Alison Brie, Craig T. Nelson.

Rating : *

No pride. Some prejudice. Few laughs.

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If the sporadically repellent new comedy Get Hard was a stand-up routine, it would fundamentally be the same three jokes looped for 100 minutes:

(1) Black people are experts on prison life. They just have to be. Look at how many of ‘em get thrown in jail every year!

(2) How about them gays, huh? They’re just so gay. And what about that gay stuff they do when their clothes come off? It’s just soooooooo gay. And so icky.

(3) And hey, did you know that gay stuff happens in prisons, like, all the time? A high percentage of it is rape. Especially if you’re white and well-off. Need an exact figure on forced sexual assaults behind bars? Go ask someone black. Most of ‘em have been to jail already.

Not his best ... Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart in Get Hard.

Will Ferrell has the lead role of James, a clueless financier about to start a 10-year stretch in the slammer for a fraud he did not commit.

Rather than clear his name, James would rather wallow in his fear of becoming everyone’s boyfriend in prison.

So James engages the services of the only black guy he knows, his car wash dude Darnell (Kevin Hart).

For $30,000, Darnell will train James to handle the hefty helpings of homosexual harm soon to be heaped upon his person on a daily basis.

On set ... Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart from Get Hard.

Darnell has never been to jail. But he really needs that 30K. So let the racist stereotyping and gay-panic high jinks begin!

Speaking of money, an out-of-form Ferrell and a yet-to-ever-be-in-form Hart must be experiencing cash-flow problems of their own to be shovelling this sheep dip at their respective fanbases.

Trying hard ... Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart in Get Hard.

Their defence of Get Hard (which generally translates as “but we ran it past our best yes-men, and they all laughed!”) is almost as embarrassing as that of the filmmakers (”but we screen-tested it in Ferguson, and they all laughed!”).

If you do plan on seeing Get Hard, I can only recommend you take along a functioning calendar of some kind.

In a film whose thinking is this recklessly retrograde, it could be the only means possible of reminding yourself it is actually the year 2015.

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