The crudely titled "Get Hard" is a version of "Pygmalion" the likes of which George Bernard Shaw could never possibly have imagined.
Here the roles have been reversed, with the learned professor transmogrified into a streetwise working-class regular guy (Kevin Hart), while the lower-class flower girl has become a highly successful hedge fund manager (Will Ferrell). When the latter is unjustly convicted of embezzling funds and sentenced to ten years in prison, the desperate man turns to Hart to instruct him in the fine art of staying alive behind bars.
Hart and Ferrell do yeoman work with some pretty shoddy material, which boils down, essentially, to a 100-minute-long prison-rape joke, with homophobic attitudes that are, quite frankly, shocking to behold in the second decade of the 21st Century.
There are a few funny moments when Ferrell spends an afternoon with Hart's relatives in the 'hood, but the movie is clearly more concerned with indulging in crude slapstick than in delivering anything even remotely resembling biting social satire.
Here the roles have been reversed, with the learned professor transmogrified into a streetwise working-class regular guy (Kevin Hart), while the lower-class flower girl has become a highly successful hedge fund manager (Will Ferrell). When the latter is unjustly convicted of embezzling funds and sentenced to ten years in prison, the desperate man turns to Hart to instruct him in the fine art of staying alive behind bars.
Hart and Ferrell do yeoman work with some pretty shoddy material, which boils down, essentially, to a 100-minute-long prison-rape joke, with homophobic attitudes that are, quite frankly, shocking to behold in the second decade of the 21st Century.
There are a few funny moments when Ferrell spends an afternoon with Hart's relatives in the 'hood, but the movie is clearly more concerned with indulging in crude slapstick than in delivering anything even remotely resembling biting social satire.