'Get Hard' speaks volumes about assumptions, hypocrisy

“Get Hard” opens with a tight close-up of Will Ferrell weeping — openly, copiously, theatrically — in what has become his signature gesture of doing something banal to an absurd extreme.

In this scattershot, funny-dumb satire, Ferrell plays James, a Los Angeles financier whose arrest for fraud interrupts his life as a one-percenter. He enlists the help of Darnell (Kevin Hart), the guy who washes his car, to help him prepare for prison, assuming that, if it's true that one in three black men will end up behind bars, it's statistically likely that a menial laborer will have done time at some point.

In fact, Darnell owns the carwashing company, is a devoted husband and father, and aspires to move his family into a better school district. But in exchange for the down payment on a house, he's willing, as he explains to his wife, to “be every stereotype (James) thinks I am.” The result is a fish-out-of-water buddy comedy that — when it's working — also does a smartly scathing job of sending up privilege, entitlement and crony capitalism: The whole phenomenon, as it's been said, of being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple.

Or, as James's weaselly boss, played by Craig T. Nelson, puts it, starting with nothing: “Just me, my computer and an $8 million loan from my father.”

Written by Jay Martel, Ian Roberts, Etan Cohen and Adam McKay, “Get Hard” punctuates those ironic zingers with broader, more lowbrow physical set pieces, most of which pivot around Hart's diminutive height and James's fear of being raped in prison.

The dubious merit of tiresome “Don't drop the soap” jokes aside, “Get Hard” sometimes veers perilously close to committing the very sins it aspires to criticize. The movie is drenched in gay panic. (One of those set pieces takes place in the bathroom of a West Hollywood restaurant.) And, when the two men enlist the services of Darnell's street-toughened cousin, some of those stereotypes Darnell invoked earlier — from gangbangers to twerking hoochie mamas — come floridly and lazily into play.

Still, Ferrell and Hart have a genial, easygoing chemistry, and “Get Hard” manages to score more than a few good points about facile assumptions and toxic hypocrisy. In a patronizing but on-point wish-fulfillment sequence, James helps Darnell's cousin to monetize his ill-gotten gains by way of complex computer trading programs, resulting in exponential growth of his portfolio.

“The stock market is gangsta,” one of his minions exclaims. Elizabeth Warren couldn't have put it better.