The first thing that struck me about this film was the title. As someone who grew up watching Carry On films, my life has been plagued with the constant seeing of innuendos that most people don’t – or at least, pretend they don’t. So, when looking through the list of films, this one jumped out for that reason, and also because I’d recently watched the Wedding Ringer with Kevin Hart, and it made me laugh something wicked. I think Kevin Hart has become my favourite comedy actor for these two films alone. Chasing up his back catalogue in the coming weeks.

Kevin Hart plays your every day hard working guy, running a ‘luxury’ car wash and is trying to get money to send his daughter to a better school. The school she attends has metal detectors and such at the front door, and he does look genuinely concerned when dropping her off. Will Ferrell is a super-rich elite chap with a scheming and manipulative wife. The fact that he’s a total idiot means that she can twist his arm with relative ease. Her father runs the business he works for, and it’s within this business that the plot unfolds.
At Ferrell’s birthday party, the FBI come in and arrest him (those damned Feds!) for fiddling the books. Ferrell is scape-goated for something he hasn’t done, and is sentenced to time in San Quentin (sadly no Johnny Cash gigs anymore), giving him 30 days to get his life in order before he goes*. Ferrell’s character James King is left a broken man and we see him bawling in a variety of scenes, as he doesn’t know what he is going to do. His wife seems unabashed, and not really too bothered by the whole affair.
A chance meeting with Kevin Hart’s character Darnell in the company car park sees Ferrell promise Hart some money if he helps him prepare for prison – Ferrell showing his buffoonery by assuming Darnell has been to prison because he is black. Hart agrees, and sets up ‘Prison School’ in Ferrell’s house. Hart’s character has never been to prison, so he briefly consults his cousin to find out what it’s like, and cracks on with everything he can think of, he needs to help Ferrell ‘Get Hard’.
When Hart’s prison school fails to help Ferrell improve, he takes the ideas to a whole new level, that sees them with a white supremacist group, Darnell’s gang-leading cousin, as well as other methods I’ll leave to the film. Each instance pokes fun at Ferrell and Hart’s characters ignorance, as neither of them have any knowledge of prison, and so it really is a case of the blind leading the blind. As with all good comedies, it is two inept characters taking a path that no one would ever expect them to, in an effort to prepare one of them for something neither of them know anything about. It is as ridiculous as that last sentence, and for me personally, it worked.
The film itself does many tried and tested jokes – some stereotyping ones you may have seen before – and also manages many new toe-curling and wincing ones, each time taking one step further than the other. I found this genuinely funny, in that, comedies work best when they are so ridiculous that the absurdity carries it on, to the point where you forget what the actual plot is. Someone set up Ferrell didn’t they? Admittedly, the uncovering of the plot was very last minute in the film, but that also plays into the humour, they’ve been that focussed on the crazy prison preparation, that they haven’t even tried to uncover the incredibly simple plot behind why he is going there.
Get Hard is a very funny film, and did make me laugh out loud, in the same way Something about Mary, Dumb and Dumber and the Wedding Ringer did, and do. It’s well-written, the jokes come thick and fast (Get Hard, coming thick and fast? oo-er) and it shows the two main stars doing what they do best, creating laughs.

Like every film, it’s not for everyone, but it was for me. If you like easy humour in a film that doesn’t take itself seriously, I’d recommend it. Expect more reviews of Kevin Hart films in the future.

Cheers.

Rob K

*** More thoughts on the film, and the uproar that it provoked below ***

Now having a quick look online moments ago, it seemed to cause something of a shit storm when it was first released, because of the nature of some of the humour, and offended a lot of people regarding homophobia, Ferrell’s panic at possibly being raped in prison, and the usual stereotyping which is found in comedies. When I watched it, offensiveness didn’t really come across to me, Ferrell’s worry at being raped in prison and the things he considers to get himself ready for prison shows his idiocy, and the absurdity of his world view when all he knows is white privilege and his elite, rich associates. He doesn’t know what to expect, because he’s been living the highlife without ever having to consider it, and because of that, he has an unrealistic view of everything. Hart’s comment while they’re at a gay hang out of ‘It’s what they do’ when referring to his thoughts on gay men meeting in bathroom stalls, shows his ignorance at something he knows nothing about – who doesn’t know someone who’s got lucky in a bathroom cubicle gay or not?Equally the same could be said for their views on what prison is like, and also the portrayal of white supremacist and black gangs. The film to me, showed two buffoons trying to get one of them ready for prison, while oblivious to everything outside of their normal world, with situations Hart is uncomfortable with, and Ferrell is hopelessly oblivious to thrown in for good measure.

When people read between the lines all the time, they often miss the glaringly obvious, and that’s what seems to have happened with many people here, the focus has been taken away from the film being the wince and cringe comedy, and seems to have been quoted as factual. When watching On the Buses over Christmas last year, it struck me that the whole story was the two main fellas trying to get their leg over. It didn’t mean that I thought all bus drivers were sex pests, and it didn’t make me think that all women were easy and always game – Okay, I did briefly think that the pair of them would probably be riddled…
Personally, I watch films to escape from reality. I don’t watch things in 3D because life is in 3D. I don’t want film to imitate life too closely. Comedies, should in my opinion, be absurd, ridiculous and stupid. Anything in them shouldn’t be taken as a writer’s, actor’s, producer’s world view, because they’re ridiculous. That they’re in the film at all is more of a statement that it presumes people know that these things aren’t true, and bringing them up as a massive issue surely shows that the critics don’t give the audience the kudos to separate fact from fiction, comedy from reality. Every human being worth their salt knows that its not meant to be a realistic portrayal of life, and if they don’t, they need to be educated on it.
I don’t automatically assume that everything in films is fact, even in thrillers, sci-fi or gore – pretty sure Ash would have bled out in Evil Dead 2, but then the rest of the film would have been pants. Far from it, if comedies were factual, most would end horribly when someone bled out, fell out a window, got hit by a car, got hit in the face with something dangerous, or accidentally shot. Home Alone has two burglars who in reality would probably be dead from a tin of paint to the face, if not that, then falling from great heights, infected wounds from all the nails, or what have you would see them off. Ridiculous, not reality, just the way it should be. Stereotyping should be poked fun at, because stereotyping is ridiculous, just as the people who do it are.
As if to confirm that the whole films is nothing more than a pair of inept characters missing the blindingly obvious and instead going for the preposterous, the main plot of the film, the who stitched up Ferrell aspect, is uncovered at the end with great ease, something that neither of the buffoons had considered. I feel that is testament to the film being more about their ineptitude, misconceptions and closed-mindedness than it is about causing offence – the humour is in their ignorance.
I feel I could write a fairly interesting critical commentary of the film on the basis of the above, and the other things I haven’t covered, suffice to say intolerance of people based on differences from yourself is wrong, plain and simple, and you even see a hat-tip to this later on in the film, when Hart is talking to his gay friend about relationship problems.

I can never read too far into a comedy film, as it’s written to be farcical.