Get Hard

For me, a new Will Ferrell movie is usually a cause for celebration. Hey, I even liked Land of the Lost, a film I feel was unjustly dismissed by the masses. Alas, even the great comedic masters misfire from time to time, and Ferrell's latest goes on the dung heap with the likes of his Kicking and Screaming and Bewitched. Ferrell plays a finance guru who gets convicted for crimes he supposedly didn't commit, and sentenced to hard time in San Quentin. In an attempt to not get raped when he goes to jail, he hires his car washer (Kevin Hart) to train him in prison ways, for he immediately assumes the man did time because he's black. So, right there, the Ferrell character is a racist ignoramus that we are supposed to feel sorry for, and that just doesn't happen. Ferrell and Hart labor for laughs in a sea of dick and ass rape jokes, and it's all quite ugly and mostly unfunny. There are some highlights, including a simulated prison riot in a wine cellar that inexplicably includes the appearance or an angry baboon, but the jokes are mostly duds. You know you are in trouble when your plot is mostly identical to a failed Rob Schneider movie (the equally offensive Big Stan).