Get Hard review: A hard slap in the face to political correctness

Director: Etan Cohen; Screenwriters: Jay Martel, Ian Roberts, Etan Cohen; Starring: Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Craig T Nelson, Alison Brie, Edwina Findley Dickerson; Running time: 100 mins; Certificate: 15

Will Ferrell is looking at ten years in the slammer in a comedy that delivers a hard slap in the face to political correctness. As a superrich financial whizz he employs Kevin Hart to toughen him up on the basis of his 'urban' roots, but for all his bigotry, Ferrell always comes across like the biggest fool in the room and that's just how he likes it. This isn't up there with Anchorman, but if you're a fan of the big guy, you won't be disappointed.

If he wasn't so wide-eyed and eager to please his boss and future father-in-law (Craig T Nelson), then high-flying hedge fund manager James King (Ferrell) would be easy to hate. He becomes the poster boy for white-collar crime after it's discovered that he embezzled millions from the company – except that he didn't do it. Hart, too, is an honest guy as Darnell, who runs a small business washing cars and is desperate to move his family out of the notorious 'hood of South Central, LA. When King offers him big money for lessons in prison survival, he naturally goes along with the assumption that he's done hard time.

Fans of Boyz 'N' the Hood will get a tickle out of the in-jokes when Darnell draws from the plot of that movie to convince King he is 'gangsta'. Of course, this being a Will Ferrell vehicle (hatched with his old cohort Adam McKay, directed by Etan Cohen) the jokes are very rarely this subtle. Even that one eventually gets battered to death, but there's a high turnover of gags that ensures the frequency of chuckles.

The energy between the stars keeps it lively, too, best evidenced in a scene where Hart comes at Ferrell with every stereotype in the prison yard, from every angle, to keep him on his toes. Hart throws himself into every scene with being too in your face, but there's no doubting who the main man is when it comes to comedy value.

Ferrell specialises in obnoxious, childlike characters - turning them inside-out and making them feel raw and exposed - and that vulnerability is obvious from the opening shot of King blubbing like a baby. Hart turns the man to jelly by using his own prejudices against him to break his spirit before he can build him back up again.

And inevitably, 'bromance' blossoms. That's aside from King's anxieties about what might happen in the shower room and these are some of the more obvious, lazy gags (Ferrell is nearly upstaged by a prosthetic penis), still accusations of homophobia are disingenuous given the context.

Ferrell specialises in obnoxious, childlike characters – turning them inside-out and making them feel raw and exposed – and that vulnerability is obvious from the opening shot of King blubbing like a baby.

The comedy is big and even if it isn't always clever, Ferrell is always the butt of the joke (incidentally, the white supremacists also get raked over the coals when King looks to get 'ganged up' for protection). His awkward manner also belies a delicate feel for what's funny and his playfulness with language – or what Hart calls his "unorthodox way of cussing" – always guarantees a few laughs. A hundred minutes of your life goes by quickly.