March 26--An awful lot of "Get Hard" depends on gay-panic humor of a weirdly squirmy and dated sort, making you wonder if this new Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart mystery might best be viewed alongside reissues of "Cruising" and "Norman ... Is That You?"
I call it a mystery because that's what it contains -- a series of mysteries.
It's a mystery why two bona fide comic stars, working very, very hard to keep this thing from tanking, couldn't pressure their collaborators for another rewrite or three. It's a mystery why first-time feature director Etan Cohen, a talented screenwriter ("Idiocracy," "Tropic Thunder"), couldn't figure out how to film the simplest dialogue exchanges or the violence. Hobbled by a nervous, insecure editing rhythm and a total lack of slapstick finesse, "Get Hard" represents a matchup of form and content that does the people on screen no favors.
Ferrell plays James King, a stuffy hedge-fund wizard with a duplicitous gold digger (Alison Brie) for a fiancee (can't get enough of that cliche) and a lifetime of unexamined prejudices and privileges about to catch up with his sorry white self. Framed and arrested for fraud and embezzlement, King hires carwash manager Darnell (Hart), whom he mistakes for a hardened ex-con, to school him in prison survival and sexual assault prevention in a 30-day runup to San Quentin.
Most of "Get Hard" is a training montage played out in slow motion. Hart's character exists to guide the redemption of Ferrell's protagonist. The script by Jay Martel, Ian Roberts and director Cohen is witlessly coarse. Even the showoff sequences, such as Hart impersonating three different thugs in a training exercise, fall flat and betray all sorts of strain. Between this film and the recent Seth Rogen/James Franco North Korea lark "The Interview," you'd think Hollywood knows how to write exactly one sort of joke: the kind that depends on somebody inserting or removing an object from his rear end.
On the venerable film website IMDb.com, one of the discussion threads regarding "Get Hard" says it all, "Penis scene was shocking." It certainly will be for many folks.
The shock, however, relates to the bathroom stall scene's mind-boggling klutziness, both in the staging and editing, as physical comedy -- clearly there were trims here to avoid an NC-17 rating -- and not so much the body part itself. I mean, why blame the guest star? It's only as good as its material.
Is the movie homophobic and racist? I'd say sort of and sort of. Many have said so, ever since the disastrous premiere at South by Southwest. Gay-panic humor isn't quite the same thing as homophobia, but it's close enough to be tiresome. And like the uneasy scene in "Anchorman 2" when Ferrell talks jive and "acts black," "Get Hard" attempts to mine humor from putting an uptight, clueless 1-percenter in South Central Los Angeles, dressing like Lil Wayne and teaching Crenshaw gang members to work the stock market. I laughed when Ferrell smashed a bottle of beer on the sidewalk, just to show he's tough, but if that's a movie's standout bit, that movie's no standout.
The real mystery is this: Can "Get Hard" make enough money in its first week to counteract the likely word-of-mouth? On the way out of a recent promotional screening, the audience seemed subdued. Maybe they were rattled by the penis scene. But maybe they just know a poorly crafted comedy when they see one.
"Get Hard" -- 1 star
MPAA rating: R (for pervasive crude and sexual content and language, some graphic nudity, and drug material)
Running time: 1:40
Opens: Friday
mjphillips@tribpub.com
