Week 16: Get Hard

Director: Etan Cohen

Writer: Ian Roberts, Etan Cohen, Adam McKay and Jay Martel 

Seen: Sunday the 10th of April

Venue: IMC Galway

Snacks: Nuts

Mood: Bemused

This week we were hit once again with the central challenge of writing this blog, choosing a film to see from the increasing amount of crap that comes to our cinema screens. Fortunately there was one good film available and an Irish production to boot (we are all about encouraging home grown talent) unfortunately we had already seen it at the Galway Film Fleadh last year. Glassland is the second film by a young and brilliant director Gerard Barrett and for those of you who read this I can’t recommend Glassland enough. It is a brilliantly acted, directed, gripping and relevant film about contemporary Ireland so go and see it if you get the chance. I wrote a review for Film Ireland last year for its Fleadh screening, which you can read at this link http://filmireland.net/2014/07/13/glassland-review-of-irish-film-at-the-galway-film-fleadh/ .  

So rather than go and see Glassland again and kind of cheating, we decided to pick something from the rest of the bunch and our choices were very limited. In the end it came down to Get Hard or Child 44 and to be fair you couldn’t get more different films. So we decided none of us were willing to sit and watch Tom Hardy fumble his way through a bad Russian accent in Child 44, so we opted for the lighter Get Hard which if nothing else has the amusing head of Will Ferrell.

Ok, this will probably be the briefest review I have written. I am not going to get into the debate about if the film is homophobic as some reviews have critiqued it for, I will let you decide that for yourselves if you get to see it. What I will say is Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart carry this film and they are pretty funny, but the jokes I felt were somewhat weak because I felt like I had heard all the gags before. The premise of the film could have been interesting - a rich, white guy is learning street smarts from a struggling black guy to survive in jail – but again I felt there just wasn’t anything original about it. However, if you like the two main actors than you will most likely enjoy Get Hard.