Yes, you’re right, I concede, “Trading Places” -a movie “Get Hard” superficially resembles, is boatloads better than “Get Hard”, “Trading Places” is a high concept comedy about race and status, making the well worth making point at the time (1983) albeit less so thirty odd years later, that environment infects ability.
“Get Hard”, on the other hand, while it shares with “Trading Places” a white man being framed by his boss and soon to be father-in-law for a white collar crime and forced to get hard, is really an excuse for gay phobia, dick jokes, black-white jokes and Will Farrell as the framed, and Kevin Hart as a guy trying to help him survive in prison, to riff for 90 minutes, none of which makes the slightest bit of sense and some of which is very funny.
Nobody does gentle giant better than Farrell and the diminutive Kevin Hart plays tough very appealingly, between the two they make a funny odd couple. Here: I am sick of writing summaries so let me steal it: “a wrongfully convicted investment banker who prepares for prison life with the help of the man who washes his car. Etan Cohen directs, with Ian Roberts and Jay Martel handling screenwriting duties”.
Whether benchpressing Kevin, or running from a white supremacist gang, or a crying jag from hell, Will has a sweetness that undercuts the stupidity and poor taste, and Kevin, as the least threatening black man in the hood, plays nicely off Will.
“Get Hard” isn’t very good, but it is much better natured than it deserves to be. What do you expect from a movie where Will’s gang name is “Mayo”?
Grade: C+