CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: ‘Get Hard’ is Less Than the Sum of Its Parts
CHICAGO – Will Ferrell is a funny guy. Kevin Hart can be a funny guy. But the prison buddy comedy “Get Hard” is woefully less than the sum of its comedic parts. It fires buckshot of lame jokes at its audience, but precious few come anywhere near their targets as it squanders nearly every comic opportunity that comes its way.
Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
Ferrell stars as a wealthy hedge fund manager with a gold-digging fiancée (Alison Brie), and a house full of servants who can barely conceal their disdain for him. His life begins to crumble when he’s accused of fraud and embezzlement, and arrested at his own birthday party. No one is asking for “The Verdict” in a Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy, but even by the lackadaisical standards of a studio comedy, Ferrell is convicted and sentenced to 10 years hard labor in San Quentin based on alarmingly little evidence and with little or no provocation.
Facing a long prison sentence, Ferrell hires Hart’s Darnell to get him ready for life on the inside. Hart is the middle class owner of a car wash, but Ferrell assumes that because he’s black he must have gone to prison. Ha ha. Hart agrees to the deal because he needs the money to buy a new house in a better neighborhood so he can get his daughter into a new school. So he goes about reinforcing this wealthy white man’s prejudices by embodying every negative stereotype he’s ever seen.
Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart in ‘Get Hard’
Photo credit: Warner Bros.