Cast your mind back ten years. It’s 2015, and franchises rule. Mad Max: Fury Road, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation are battling it out for box office supremacy. Sicario, Carol, and The Martian are on numerous “best films of the year” lists, but comedies are out in the cold.
Yet, although it wasn’t a vintage year, some of their biggest names were out in force — Melissa McCarthy, Seth MacFarlane and, perhaps busiest of all, Will Ferrell. One of his releases from that year — and his most controversial film ever – has just arrived on Netflix today [Monday, June 9]. It’s Get Hard.
He plays an obscenely rich hedge-fund manager who finds himself convicted of fraud and sentenced to a stretch in San Quentin. With just one month to get his affairs in order and, knowing that his chances of surviving longer than a few minutes behind bars are slim to nothing, he turns to a stranger he believes is an ex-con and can teach him the art of survival.
Played by Kevin Hart, he’s actually a car wash manager who has never even received a parking ticket and has his work cut out in devising a training regime to keep predatory prisoners at bay. As the tests become increasingly gruelling (to say the least), the two learn they’ve been wrong about many things and that their assumptions about each other are at the top of the list.
With its racial, sexist and homophobic jokes, the film was labelled politically incorrect to the extent that its director, Etan Cohen, and its stars had to speak out in its defence. Audiences gave it a mixed response, both laughing and cringing at what was, at times, surprisingly strong stuff, and the film is probably Ferrell’s raunchiest work to date — even closer to the mark than the much-loved Step Brothers (2008).
But there’s another side to it. While it might look crude on the surface, there’s an element of satire just beneath which is aimed directly at the assumptions that feed so many social attitudes. There’s no doubt that it’s offensive, but in a way that echoes a boundary pushing comedy from the mid-70s — Blazing Saddles (1974). The older film is a classic, Get Hard less so, but it still has plenty of laughs and much of that is down to the Ferrell/Hart pairing, which is where it really scored on its release and still does now.
Both actors are naturals when it comes to working as part of a double act. Here, they play on their best-known characteristics — Hart’s fast-talking street smarts and Ferrell’s naïvete and fumbling attempts to appear more confident — to create the humor and ultimately show their characters’ individual strengths.
In more recent years, Hart’s partnerships with Dwayne Johnson in Central Intelligence and the Jumanji franchise have proved particularly successful. For Ferrell, however, a co-star is essential to his collaborative way of working, both in front and behind the camera.
As an actor, he thrives on sharing the limelight either as part of a double act or in a small ensemble, most notably in the Anchorman movies. While he doesn’t have a regular on-screen comedy partner, there are a handful he returns to, John C Reilly especially, and there’s a good reason. In Step Brothers, their second film together, their juvenile 40-somethings forced into being siblings were uniquely special, and it was all down to their personal chemistry.
Sadly, even their combined magic couldn’t make Holmes And Watson (2018) live up to everybody’s expectations. His roster of female co-stars is equally impressive — Tina Fey, Reese Witherspoon, Amy Poehler, Christina Applegate — and last year saw him carry this collaborative style to a documentary, the much-praised Will And Harper.
Ferrell also produced this moving portrait of his friendship with writer Harper Steele, his first documentary behind the camera and easily his most personal project to date.
Before then, he’d worked with director/writer Adam McKay on upwards of 30 titles, often acting in them as well, and since they ended their working partnership in 2019,
Ferrell has continued producing, with Apple TV Plus’s Dickens-inspired Spirited (2022) proving to be a festive favourite and Netflix’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) now about to return, but as a stage musical. He and Steele wrote the original movie and are set to repeat their double act for this latest incarnation.
The film was a feel-good piece of entertainment, yet its most familiar song probably wouldn’t have been out of place in Get Hard. Yes, we mean “Jaja Ding Dong”!
Get Hard is on Netflix in the US and UK now.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga is on Netflix in the US and the UK.