Will Ferrell has taken on the news media, Nascar, semi-pro basketball, law enforcement, Mexican drug cartels, and professional ice skating, but is he ready for the American prison system? We are about to find out with Get Hard, the latest comedy from Ferrell and new partner-in-crime Kevin Hart.
Get Hard has Ferrell playing James King, a criminal in the finance world who enlists Darnell Lewis’s (Hart) assistance to prepare him for a stint in a maximum security prison. Hart is far from a hardened criminal, but that does not stop him from milking his new friend for all he’s worth. As he tells his wife in this trailer, he’s going to be every stereotype in the book if that’s what it takes.
The latest preview showcases Ferrell’s always-amusing brand of humor, as his clueless character attempts to get in good with gang members, look and act tough, and learn how to survive a prison riot. While I fear that we might be in for at least a few sexual assault jokes, perhaps those will turn out to be not that off-putting. This is not a serious examination of prison life, after all.
Get Hard looks like a silly movie, but an entertaining one nonetheless. I usually like Ferrell even at his worst, and this time he seems to have a good partner in the form of Kevin Hart. What’s more, this is the directorial debut of Etan Cohen, the writer behind Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy, so we can expect some sort of meaning behind all the madness.
Whether the decidedly non-PC nature of this outing pays off will remain for the public to decide, but with all the Oscar bait in theaters right now I am actually in the mood for a good, ridiculous comedy.
Get Hard will come to cinemas on March 27.