When I saw Will Ferrell screaming repeatedly at his kids to “get off the shed” in his second sketch on “Saturday Night Live” in 1995, it seemed clear that a major comedy star had been born. It was the simplest of premises — seemingly mild-mannered father breaking up idle chitchat with neighbors at a backyard cookout to savagely berate his off-camera children — and it brought the house down. Over that first season we’d find out Ferrell had many modes, but his penchant for zero-to-100 histrionics was Belushi-esque (sans the drug-fueled danger). It was only a matter of time before he became a movie star.
Unlike most “SNL” breakout performers, Ferrell eased his way into stardom. He was effective in the first two “Austin Powers” movies, and superb as a flustered Bob Woodward in “Dick,” but it wasn’t until he sucked down a beer bong in 2003’s “Old School” that he became one of cinema’s deadliest comedic weapons. A year later, we got “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy,” and Ferrell rocketed to the film comedy A-list.
Ferrell’s career has had its ups and downs, primarily because he works so frequently. His oeuvre is littered with movies that don’t deserve his uncommon talent. So it’s interesting to see that, according to FlixPatrol’s streaming rankings, one of Ferrell’s best films, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” is neck-and-neck with one of his biggest misses, “Get Hard,” at Hulu. Right now, “Get Hard” is ranked fourth ahead of “Talladega Nights” at fifth. This is unfortunate.
Talladega Nights rules, Get Hard drools
“Talladega Nights” was Will Ferrell’s second big-screen collaboration with “SNL” colleague Adam McKay, and I think it’s every bit as funny as “Anchorman.” Ferrell as a NASCAR sensation who loses his juju, only to regain it when challenged by French driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), is at his cocky-panicked best. He hits all of these notes with ease, and strikes up such electric chemistry with John C. Reilly that McKay reunited the two for the uproariously absurd “Step Brothers.”
“Get Hard” could’ve been a razor-sharp satire of a white-collar criminal recruiting a Black man to coach him up prior to a 10-year stint in the pen, but it devolves quickly into a series of prison rape and gay panic jokes. Ferrell plays James King, a rich hedge-fund wizard who gets framed for embezzlement and turns to Kevin Hart’s Darnell Lewis for a crash-lock-up survival course. The joke is that James has made a racist assumption; Lewis has never been to jail. But Lewis needs the money to move his family to a better neighborhood, so he leans into the stereotype to improve his life. Ferrell and Hart deliver as best they can with a cliched script written by Etan Coen (“Idiocracy”), Ian Roberts (Upright Citizens Brigade co-founder) and Jay Martel (“Key and Peele” showrunner), but the movie lets them down at every turn.
“Get Hard” is funny in spurts, but it’s mostly a lazy comedy from talented writers and performers. There’s a great idea here, but it was sanded down into useless mainstream comedy.
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