A few weeks ago, I went to see the latest comedy and highly anticipated film, Get Hard. Get Hard is a movie about a millionaire hedge fund manager, James King (Will Ferrell), who is indicted for fraud and is sentenced to ten years in a maximum-security prison. He enlists the help of a local man, Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart), to get him tougher before he goes to prison. This movie was one of my most highly anticipated films of 2015, and also one of my biggest disappointments. Despite the countless interviews done alone and as a duo on shows like The Tonight Show, the Late Late Show, Conan and more, it only fueled the fire of this movie’s unattainable potential. Even without all the promotion, anyone who has ever laughed before would think that putting two comedy greats together like Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart would be a home run. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
One thing that was easily noticeable is that Ferrell and Hart just don’t have great chemistry on screen. In scenes that they were on their own, you got the wonderful laughs that you had hoped for. However, when they were together, some scenes were just plain awkward. You wanted to laugh because you thought you should, for it was off-putting to think of something that Will Ferrell said that wasn’t funny instead of an old Will Ferrell movie or a Kevin Hart special where you laughed because it was physically impossible not to.
Another problem was that the entire movie was based on stereotypes; jail stereotypes, racial stereotype and even sexual stereotypes. The whole movie is based on the fact that Will Ferrell’s character just assumes that Kevin Hart’s character has been to jail because he is black. There are a lot of movies where stereotypes are used as jokes, but this movie used stereotypes as a storyline and it took away from the humor. Something that is commonplace for modern day comedy, and especially Will Ferrell movies, is crude humor. Get Hard took crude humor to a new level, but a level no one wanted to go to. There were scenes so crude that they cannot even be described in The Charger Bulletin, for this is a professional newspaper and it would be degrading to put some of the filth from Get Hard into it. It was another stereotype taken to the next level.
Will Ferrell is one of my favorite actors. Kevin Hart is one of my favorite comedians. It was a huge let down to see both of these greats in a movie that didn’t showcase their talent. It basically ended up being two actors working with that they were given. This may be the result of an idea being better on paper than on screen. Hopefully Get Hard will blow over and we can get back to the iconic comedians that we once knew.
