If you were to pinpoint a time when Will Ferrell began to get old for me, it was probably around the time when Get Hard(2015) was released.  It might have been sooner, but I remember seeing a preview for it and thinking that it looked ridiculous.  This is also without mentioning all the perceived racial stereotypes contained in the trailer, which the movie did nothing to avoid.  Despite these hangups, I made a Catholic decision to watch it today.  Does that sound strange?  Though it is not often discussed, one of the seven works of corporal mercy is to visit those imprisoned.  There are ministries dedicated to doing that, though one rarely hears of them being promoted.  Today’s film deals with somebody who is about to be incarcerated, but these thoughts provided my basis for watching it today.

The day on which we meet James King (Will Ferrell), a hedge fund manager and the main character in Get Hard, is one in which he is crying profusely.  The reason for the tears starts a month earlier.  Awakening next to his fiancée, Alissa Barrows (Alison Brie) and his boss’ daughter, he goes through his morning routine while the staff roll their eyes at his privilege.  James is blissfully unaware of any acrimony towards him, including from his co-workers.  The person who does seemingly fawn on him is Martin Barrow (Craig T. Nelson), the aforementioned boss, if only for all the money James makes the company.  Speaking of fawning, today is the day that Martin is making James a partner, doing so as an engagement gift to his future son-in-law.  When James is about to depart for home, he is interrupted by Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart).  We have already met the strait-laced car wash entrepreneur who is trying to find a way to move his family out of the crime-stricken neighborhood in which they live.  Darnell approaches James with a business proposition: for $30,000, the exact amount of money needed to put a down payment on a new house, Darnell will guarantee a lifetime of car washes.  James turns down Darnell with a condescending reminder about the importance of hard work.  Meanwhile, James attends an engagement party, which is going swimmingly until the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) interrupts a guitar duet he is doing with John Mayer (as himself) to arrest the financial sector employee.  Martin immediately promises to do everything he can to help, but his lawyer, Peter Penny (Greg Germann), comes back with a plea deal: admit guilt to embezzlement and fraud and spend about a month in a lax prison setting.  To his credit, James maintains his innocence on the charges and decides to fight.  On top of spectacularly losing the case, the judge, tired of executives getting light punishments, sentences James to the maximum of time in the most difficult prison setting.  This is why James is crying at the beginning.  Martin, again, vows to do what he can, but his daughter is less accommodating.  Then again, if I showed up suddenly dressed in a silly disguise and proposing they flee to Mexico, I would probably expect to be spurned, too.  Soon thereafter, Darnell finds James hiding in the trunk of the convicted felon’s car in the company garage where Darnell has his business.  Resigned to having to do time behind bars, James is hyper-aware of the fact that he is ill-prepared to handle prison culture.  He thus makes the horrible racial assumption that Darnell has been incarcerated and offers $30,000 if Darnell will teach James everything about life on the inside.  Though Darnell’s wife, Rita Lewis (Edwina Findley), thinks he is crazy because he knows also nothing about prison, Darnell accepts.  Thus begins a series of supposedly comedic set pieces that need not be detailed, but cover everything you would expect on such a topic.  Through it all, James’ latent soft-heartedness keeps surfacing, which is supposed to be the source of the laughs.  Darnell is trying to toughen James to what he will soon be facing, and while there are a few semi-promising moments, he remains the unassuming nice guy he has always been.  After a simulated prison riot gone wrong, ending with a shiv being partially lodged in James’ skull, Darnell takes his client home to be looked after by his nurse wife.  When even she can see that James is innocent in all ways, she suggests trying to find the one responsible for the crimes and clear his name.  Instead, Darnell takes James to the former’s cousin, Russell (Tip “T.I.” Harris), the leader of a gang known as the Crenshaw Kings.  Once they get over the absurdity of the situation, Darnell is hoping that Russell’s people will keep James safe in jail.  Instead, citing racial differences, Russell sends James to a white supremacist gang.  This interaction goes as one would expect, and Darnell resorts to trying to figure out who would want to set up James.  The answer is blindingly obvious despite James underscoring the complexity of the situation: Martin.  However, when they go to Martin’s office to get the old school computer on which he keeps all his transactions, crooked and otherwise, they are stopped by Gayle (Paul Ben-Victor), Martin’s henchman.  In addition to preventing them from making off with the evidence, Gayle reveals that Darnell has been lying about his rap sheet.  James is hurt by the betrayal, turning to the Crenshaw Kings to be initiated and thus have the protection he needs.  Darnell intervenes before James goes through with a drive-by, apologizing for not telling the truth.  Instead, they travel to Martin’s yacht where James uses the capoeira he had been learning to defeat his former boss’ guards and re-take the computer.  Because the authorities had been alerted that his ankle monitor is not where it should be, they arrive at the boat’s location and take Martin into custody.  Because James still had the gun he was about to use with the Crenshaw Kings, he had to do six months in jail.  Yet, when he gets out, it is to a grateful Darnell, who, with James’ financial backing, had expanded his car wash business.

I suppose one of the appeals of Get Hard is seeing a high-powered business man take a fall, even if it is played for laughs.  I did not do much laughing during it, not only because I have a difficult time finding comedy in the misfortune of others, but also due to the type of comedy contained therein.  It is not all raunchy, but there is enough to make it nearly unwatchable.  Every premise involves a stereotype of some kind, and I have discussed in more than a few reviews the Catholic perspective on those problematic ideas.  By themselves, though, Darnell and James are acceptable characters.  One can bemoan how James is oblivious early on to the plight of others, particularly his response to Darnell’s original business proposals.  Further, I cannot abide how he continues to think about people of color in tired, conventional ways.  Neither of those are Christian ideals, particular his lack of charity.  By the way, giving to the poor is another corporal work of mercy.  What can be praised about him is his simplicity.  Again, this is meant to be funny, but there is an innocence about him that is at least in the ballpark of what Jesus teaches in Mark 10:15 about receiving the Kingdom of God as a child.  Setting aside most of James’ behavior, the part this comes through the most in is his adherence to the fact that he did not commit the crime for which he had been charged.  Getting back to charity, he later reverses his previous decision and helps Darnell’s business.  As for Darnell, though he technically lies to get ahead, he is faithful to his family and friend.  Such actions should be praised, Christian or otherwise, even if the movie does not deserve it..

Please do not take that last sentence as overall praise for Get Hard.  There is little originality in it, not the least of which is because of Ferrell.  The rest of the material that I have described makes this one skippable.