Get Hard

Will Ferrell has been slipping down the laughs ladder for quite a while now. With this one he dunks in the mire at the smelly end of the giggle puddle. Is there any way back?

He plays James, an insufferably pompous money trader - something to do with investments, the stock exchange and all that financial sleight of hand that ensures six figure bonuses for shits in suits - who takes the rap for a fraud he had nothing to do with.

His fiance (Alison Brie from Community), daughter of the boss, dumps him. The firm's (corrupt?) lawyer advises that he accepts a plea, admits guilt and goes down for a year. He refuses because he's stupid and innocent. Instead he is given 30 days bail, followed by 10 years in one of those prisons where brutality equates to sodomy on an industrial scale.

He uses his 30 days to learn about survival as a privileged white middle class outsider amongst what he imagines will be a wolf pack of vicious black thugs. For this task he employs the help of Darnell (Kevin Hart), who cleans his car at the office.

Even the concept, the central idea, is racist. Because Darnell is black James assumes he's been in jail, which he hasn't. But Darnell is no fool. He concocts a 10 point plan to make James understand how to fit in with the brothers behind bars.

He learns to fight by taking on strangers in the park. He experiences gay sex by experimenting in public toilets. He hangs out with Darnell's cousin's crew.

When it's not in the cringe business the film may turn your stomach. Ferrell goes down for the third time as Hart continues his faux Eddie Murphy act with as much bluster as in The Wedding Ringer.

What is happening to mainstream Hollywood humour? Here it flirts with rough trade and now cannot get out of the gutter.