Video review: "Get Hard"

“Get Hard” is the sort of comedy you laugh at, then feel bad about it later.

This buddy flick from Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart is about as politically incorrect as you can get. It contains all sorts of stereotypes about black people, white people, gay people, incarcerated people … basically, people.

Yet it’s also undeniably funny.

Ferrell plays James King, a high finance type who’s been convicted of securities fraud, and has a few weeks to prepare before going off to maximum security prison. He’s innocent of his crimes, but guilty of being an over-privileged jerk. James hires Darnell (Hart) to help toughen him up because, well, he’s essentially the only black guy he knows.

Darnell is actually a hardworking young business owner with a family – if anything, he’s kind of a squeamish nebbish. But he’s happy to play the gangbanger for pay.

Soon Darnell is running James through his concocted prison boot camp, turning the latter’s mansion into a simulated prison, with his servants happily playing the oppressors. James learns how to front a “mad dog face” and hide contraband in, uh, dark places.

“Get Hard” won’t win any originality awards – it’s basically an unauthorized remake of “Trading Places.” But if it wallows for its laughs, it still earns them.

Video extras are pretty good, though you’ll need to buy the blu-ray combo pack to get most of them. The DVD comes only with a gag reel.

The combo comes with deleted scenes and a bunch of featurettes – some touching on production, others just opportunities for more comedy. Consider some of the titles: “Twerking 101,” “Bikers, Babes and Big Bangs” and “Put Your Lips Together and Blow.”

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Review: "Get Hard"

"Get Hard" wins zero points for originality, or subtlety. It's basically a rip-off of "Trading Places," with Will Ferrell as the snooty-yet-decent rich white guy who gets wised up to the hard knocks of life by a wiseacre black man, Kevin Hart, who pretends that he's more ghetto than he really is.

This comedy relies on multitudes of stereotypes, homophobic fears about prison rape, and a heaping helping of just plain old raunch to get its laughs. Yet get its laughs it does.

This is the sort of movie that you roar with laughter at, then feel ashamed about it afterward.

Ferrell plays James King, a young(ish) master of the universe who's about to move from being really rich to disgustingly rich. It's basically the line between people who have cavernous homes with servants around 24/7 and those who own their islands.

James has just been made partner at Wealthrop Fund Management, Los Angeles' top investment firm, and he's marrying the daughter (Alison Brie) of the CEO (Craig T. Nelson) to boot. He treats those around him as chattel, not out of innate meanness but just because that's the world he was brought up in. It's the 1 percent of the 1 percent, where you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps ... with help of $8 million in seed money from your daddy.

One of those underlings he occasionally hobnobs with is Darnell (Hart), who owns Hollywood Luxury Bubbles, the low-rent car wash company that services the chic fleet of James and company. Darnell needs a $30,000 loan to launch his own storefront and get his family out of a crappy neighborhood, but James would rather dispense condescending advice than startup money.

When James is arrested and convicted of securities fraud, however, he's forced to reevaluate his priorities. The silver spooner is facing 10 years of hard time in maximum security -- "I'm going to be attending San Quentin," is how he puts it in his fey way. Petrified by the prospect of becoming the target of gay sexual overtures, he hires Darnell to toughen him up before his stint begins.

Darnell is actually a striving family man with an adorable wife and daughter (Edwina Findley Dickerson and Ariana Neal, respectively) who wears khakis and has never had so much as a parking ticket in his life. But if the rich white dude is willing to shower him with money, he's happy to act the gangster. He gets by through borrowing the plot of "Boyz in the Hood" for his own life story, and copping tips from his cousin Russell (T.I.), who really is a scary gangbanger.

Things go from there, with the two bonding over Darnell's concocted training regimen, which includes turning James' mansion into a simulated lockdown, with his servants acting as his oppressors. (They are only too happy to comply with the play-acting.) James learns about "mad dog face," shivs and "keistering" any necessary contraband.

At various points they infiltrate a white supremacist gang and a gay hangout, since Darnell surmises that because James is so hopeless at self-defense, he either needs to recruit someone to protect him or, ah, learn how to be a people-pleaser.

Directed by rookie Etan Cohen, who also wrote the screenplay with Jay Martel and Ian Roberts, "Get Hard" is a gleefully un-politically correct comedy that doggedly pursues humor no matter what dark crevice in which it may hide. Ferrell and Hart do amiable variations of their familiar character types, and share good onscreen chemistry and comedic timing.

You may cringe while watching this movie, but it'll be with a smile on your lips.

Review: "Men in Black III"

"Men in Black III" gets brownie points simply for not being "Men in Black II."

It's been 10 years since "MIIB," and while I've completely forgotten the plot of that movie, the bad taste it left in my mouth lingers. I remember thinking it was one of the laziest sequels I'd ever seen, simply taking the quirky original film and repackaging its key elements for a cynical, money-grubbing do-over.

Despite that, it made something like a half-billion dollars, so the question becomes: why did it take a decade to make another movie? The jaded, cynical critic in me can't help but take note that the careers of star Will Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld have not exactly been afire as of late.

Sonnenfeld's been stuck doing low-profile television since the disastrous "RV" six years ago, which also pretty much marked the end of Robin Williams as a leading man. Smith hasn't starred in anything since 2008, when he gave us the lackluster "Seven Pounds" and the lackluster-er "Hancock."

Even if "MiB III" exists simply to gobble up cash and rejuvenate some careers, it's a reasonably engaging bit of disposable entertainment. It's not nearly as funny as it ought to be, and I kept feeling like the characters were explaining the movie to me rather than letting it just happen. But there's plenty of slapsticky action, more enjoyably scary/goofy aliens, and a few unexpected poignant moments.

Agents J (Smith) and K (Jones) are back as footmen in the Men in Black, a super-secret agency serving to protect the many alien species that are secretly residing on Earth (and the humans from them). Their jobs and their relationship have grown stale, with J frustrated with K's inability to ever open up to him. "I'm getting too old for this. I can only imagine how you feel," J riffs after a particularly nasty dust-up in a Chinese noodle shop.

Unfortunately, a superbad dude named Boris the Animal -- "It's just Boris," he repeatedly insists, not that anyone pays any attention -- breaks out of Lunar Max, the alien prison on the moon. A creepy alien with camera lenses for eyes and a pet that lives inside his hand and spits deadly spikes, Boris (Jemaine Clement) swears vengeance on K, who blew his arm off back in 1969.

Boris goes back in time and alters the temporal reality so K no longer exists. Now it's up to J to travel back to the days of hippies and decent rock 'n' roll and put things right.

Josh Brolin plays the young K, expertly mimicking Jones' curt mannerisms and high-pitched Texas drawl. The '60s-era aliens are a trip, made up to resemble extra-terrestrials from movie and TV of that time.

I really enjoyed Michael Stuhlbarg as Griffin, the sole survivor of his alien race who can see across the dimension of time and envision all possible outcomes at once. He's a got a daffy lost-puppy vibe, sweet-natured but with a bit of bite.

There's also a clever bit where J and K encounter Andy Warhol, who turns out to be another Men in Black agent in deep undercover (Bill Hader) to infiltrate the counterculture. "I'm so out of ideas I'm painting soup cans and bananas!"

The run-up to the big showdown is a blur of chases and quips, culminating in a fight on the launch pad of the Apollo 11 rocket as it's getting set to shoot the moon. There's also something about an ArcNet protecting the earth from a Boglodite invasion, and a love flame for K (played by Alice Eve when young and Emma Thompson when not) and a half a dozen other untidy story threads that screenwriter Etan Cohen never bothers to knit together.

It's hard to say that "Men in Black III" is worth the wait, since I don't get the sense much of anyone was really waiting for it. But now that it's here, at least you won't feel like zapping yourself with one of the MiB forget-it-all gizmos after watching it.

2.5 stars out of four