Get Hard (2015) - Learn about prison in Cohen's comedy bummer

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Kevin Hart braids Will Ferrell's unruly (and suspiciously short) hair on this poster for Etan Cohen's Get Hard

A celebrated CEO, who lives in a minor mansion with a beautiful fiancée, is indited and sentenced to prison time for fraud, and so he hires the man who washes his car to prepare him for jail.

Get Hard is written by Jay Martel (Red Nose Day (2016, TV movie)), Ian Roberts (Martin & Orloff (2002)) and debuting co-writer/director Etan Cohen (My Wife Is Retarded (2007, short)), with co-writer/co-producer Adam McKay (The Campaign (2012)) contributing story elements.

It is a frenzied but very rarely funny comedy, which couples comedy stars Kevin Hart (35 and Ticking (2011)) and Will Ferrell (The House (2017)) for the first time: Two very different comedians, whose individual talents are not exactly a match made in heaven. Still it is only their two energetic performances which give the film its very few elated moments.

The film builds both on the premise that racial stereotypes not always stick in reality, but meanwhile builds almost all of its comedy on hackneyed stereotypes. I grew tired and anything but uplifted by this stinker, which for many will probably just be remembered as the film in which a slow-motion scene has Ferrell trying to man up to perform oral sex on another man.

Watch a 4-minute scene from the film here

Cost: 44 mil. $

Box office: 111.7 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.53 times its cost)

[Get Hard premiered 16 March (South by Southwest Film Festival, Austin, TX) and runs 100 minutes. Shooting took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the production was given a 12.3 mil. $ tax incentive and spent an estimated 39.8 mil. $ there (which seems a suspiciously high figure.) The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Home, to a 33.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spend another 3 weekends in the top 5 (#3-#3-#4) and grossed 90.4 mil. $ (80.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 7.9 mil. $ (7.1 %) and Australia with 4.5 mil. $ (4 %). Cohen returned with Holmes & Watson (2018). Hart returned in Ride Along 2 (2016); Ferrell in 3 TV credits prior to his theatrical return in Daddy's Home (2015). Get Hard is rotten at 28 % with a 4.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Get Hard?