"With a promising start that lightly touches on an expansive class divide and obscene income inequality, the rapidness of comic deterioration is jaw-droppingly staggering"

Being the tiresome comic equivalent of nails scraping across an insipidly banal blackboard, Get Hard is the latest prosaic offering from the monotonous minds of Will ‘Anchorman’ Ferrell and his long-time creative partner in crime Adam McKay.

Already bang on course to secure the lewd title of this year’s tawdriest comedy, Get Hard is a flagrant smorgasbord of out-dated racial stereotypes and unblushing gang rape jokes. Utterly devoid of any comical panache, the bare bones narrative centres on the revered but oblivious hedge fund manager James King (Ferrell), whose fraudulent misdemeanours earn him a ten year stretch in the infamous San Quentin penitentiary. 

With just thirty days to get his affairs in order, a panic stricken King seeks the guidance of lowly car valet Darnell (Kevin Hart) who furtively begs for life behind bars training in exchange for $30,000. Clocking in at a painfully over-stretched 100 minutes, two thirds of the ponderously unvaried plot consists of Hart giving Ferrell a pedestrian crash course to a fail-safe jail stay. This little and large act barely raise a chuckle, except for a certain gag about rom-com favourite The Notebook. Alongside Hart’s masterful three way turn in an orchestrated turf war, whereby he enacts three separate inmates that leaves King a bumbling mess. 

With a promising start that lightly touches on an expansive class divide and obscene income inequality, the rapidness of comic deterioration is jaw-droppingly staggering. Opening to much controversy at the SXSW premiere early this month, the intended ice-thin satire did not go down well with audiences and has seemingly back fired on its creators. Being an ugly mix of white collar crime, cultural typecasts and gay sex references Get Hard is obnoxiously boorish and is certainly one to avoid.