'Get Hard' eyes stereotypes with mixed success, at best.

• Author: Cohen, Sandy
• Position: Living

Byline: Sandy Cohen

'Get Hard'

1/2

A Warner Bros. release

Rating: R for pervasive crude and sexual content and language, some graphic nudity, and drug material

Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

While the stereotypes in "Get Hard'' may be gross exaggerations, its characters live in the real world: A place where the chasm between rich and poor is vast and growing; where black men are disproportionately jailed and white-collar criminals often evade punishment.

In this comedy from first-time director Etan Cohen, James (Will Ferrell) is a Los Angeles millionaire hedge-fund investor whose life of indulgence and ignorance is interrupted by a surprise prison sentence for fraud. He turns to the guy who runs the company car wash, Darnell (Kevin Hart) -- apparently the only black person he has ever met -- and asks for help to prepare for 10 years in maximum security. Darnell has no jail experience, but he agrees because he needs money to buy a home in a better school district for his little girl.

When Darnell's wife, Rita (Edwina Findley Dickerson) -- the film's only voice of reason -- asks what he did to give the impression he had a criminal record, he replies, "I was being black.''

Darnell's pre-jail prep class includes transforming his student's Bel-Air mansion into a pretend prison, the household staff gleefully becoming its guards. Lessons include getting James in shape, teaching him how to fight and encouraging him to practice oral sex on men.

The first yields some laughs as the 6-foot-3 Ferrell uses the diminutive Hart as a barbell. But forced sex isn't funny, no matter who's doing the forcing or the gender of the parties involved. "Get Hard'' traffics in other crude humor involving more than one look at Farrell's naked tush and a tiring amount of puns on the film's title.

Darnell knows one real ex-con, his cousin Russell (an ultra-charismatic Tip "T.I.'' Harris), whom he turns to for actual help for James behind bars. James hits it off with Russell and his gangster pals when he shows them how they can "liquidate two bricks of cocaine'' into hedge funds to make more money.

"Wall Street, man. Those are the real criminals,'' one gangster says.

Right. This is supposed to be a parody of the One Percent.

The film is guilty of occasionally underlining its jokes like this...