Get Hard

Review by Joseph Anthony

GET HARD’s premise is that of a wealthy banker – James King (Will Farrell) – sentenced to maximum-security prison for fraud. With 30 days to get his affairs in order before lock-up, he hires the man who washes his car – Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart) – to get him prepared for life on the inside.

The entire premise is built on King’s racist assumption that because Lewis is black, he has been to jail. It’s not subtle, there’s a whole scene dedicated to the statistics of African American incarceration. But Lewis has not been to jail, he doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket on his record. While this is part of a larger plot to paint King in the most unlikable light possible, it’s worth pointing out because this entire movie is based on racial biases and pre-conceived notions about class, race and sexual orientation. But even for two skilled comics, boundaries are pushed beyond taboo territory and well into tawdry. For instance, using a trip to a gay bar to prepare for being attacked in prison. There are too many “don’t drop the soap”-type jokes to recall – even if I wished to remember.

Zoolander (March 15th at midnight at the Capitol Theatre)

[ZOOLANDER screens Saturday March 15th at 11:59 pm at the Capitol Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

There's an inherent contrdiction in trying to do a smart comedy celebrating and uplifting stupid people (AKA most of what Adam Sandler does). In 2001's ZOOLANDER, Ben Stiller - nobody's fool as actor/satirist, here doing directing chores as well - sends up the narcissistic world of modeling and fashion in a funny vehicle modestly profound at plumbing the depths of shallowness. ZOOLANDER is the humor equivalent of junk food, as it goes down quickly and easily and entertainingly. Nutritional worth is
questionable.

Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is the world's most successful male supermodel, a self-involved, semi-literate simpleton whose talents are limited to striking a pose, attending parties, and affecting a billboard-worth facial expression called "Blue Steel" (in other words, striking a pose). But after a hatchet-job profile by a grudge-bearing Time reporter Matilda (Christine Taylor), and losing the Male Model of the Year award to blond newcomer Hansel (Owen Wilson), Zoolander consider retiring from the looking-good business.

Unbeknownst to Derek (as are most things), he's been secretly selected by evil fashion designer Jacobim Mugatu (Will Ferrell, in campy Austin Powers supervillain mode), to be used to kill the prime minister of Malaysia, in a scheme to prevent tightening of child-labor laws in Third World clothier sweatshops. Call it THE MANCHURIAN CANDID-DOPE, as what little of Zoolander's brain there is gets washed in a "day spa," priming him as a hypnotized martial-arts assassin. His unlikely new allies, Matilda and Hansel, try to thwart the scheme.

The Lego Movie

Review by Pete Roche

Everything is awesome in the LEGO universe—especially when you’re part of a team.

But evil Lord Business (Will Ferrell) isn’t a fan of teams, fun, or randomness.  Masquerading as the CEO of a mega-corporation by day, Business overlooks the mini-figure denizens of Bricksberg from atop his dizzily tall skyscraper and sets about imposing rigid order across the fictitious LEGO land.

Emmett (Chris Pratt) is an irritatingly cheerful, rule-abiding LEGO citizen / consumer who buys the right things (overpriced coffee), watches inane TV shows (like “Where’s My Pants”) and listens to pedestrian music in a pitiful, aw shucks effort to conform.  He’d love to actually belong to something—to be part of one of these teams everyone keeps singing about—but he’s so downright ordinary and average that not even his construction site coworkers remember who he is from day to day.  Emmett’s too invisible even to tease, and too dim to fathom that soon his desperation to fit in will set him free.  His awareness of being ostracized becomes the key that will unlock strange, wonderful doors and transform him from a blithering nobody caught in an Orwellian nightmare into the “most interesting and extraordinary” person ever, alive for the first time in a waking dream of endless possibilities.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Review by Pete Roche

Hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since Will Ferrell introduced the world to everyone’s favorite mustached misogynist newscaster in ANCHORMAN:  THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY. 

Don’t remember Ron?  Of course you do.  He’s kind of a big deal.

ANCHORMAN saw Ferrell’s vainglorious TV meathead hustling for his desk jockey job at KVWN in San Diego after TV bigwigs added ambitious blonde Victoria Corningstone (Christina Applegate) to the Channel 4 lineup.  Set in the early ‘70s, the comedy lampooned the rampant sexism of Ford and Carter eras, playing women’s lib ideologies off the old-school, man’s world mentality shared by Burgundy and his dream team:  Smarmy field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), cowboy sportscaster “Champ” Kind (David Koechner), and IQ-challenged weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell).

The Campaign

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialist brothers known for their funding of Tea Party and other right-wing causes, are livid about THE CAMPAIGN, the freewheeling new comedy starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. The political comedy, directed by Jay Roach (MEET THE FOCKERS, LITTLE FOCKERS, et al.), features a pair of billionaire brothers named Motch, who back a clueless idiot (played by Galifianakis) to run against a scandal-plagued incumbent Congressman (Ferrell). After Galifianakis called the Kochs “creepy” in an interview, a spokesman for the brothers sniffed, “...[I]t’s laughable to take political guidance or moral instruction from a guy who makes obscene gestures with a monkey on a bus in Bangkok,” evidently confusing Galifianakis with the character he played in HANGOVER 2.