I’m really glad I got the chance to watch Get Hard in theatres for myself. A lot of the time when you hear about films that are culturally offensive there are people who say that nowadays everyone is far too sensitive and politically correct (often times the person saying this is not from the group being constantly depicted in a stereotypical manner). This movie had scene after scene of inflammatory portrayals.

The premise of the film *spoiler alert* is that James King (played by Will Ferrell) is a wealthy business man who is charged with embezzlement and fraud, and then sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin prison. To survive prison he enlists the help of car wash owner Darnell Lewis (played by Kevin Hart) who James has assumed completed a stint in prison- this assumption is explained with an analogy of a pizza: three slices are black and one of those slices likely ends up in prison. Darnell who is in dire need of $30 000 dollars to move his family out of the hood in Crenshaw, goes along with the idea out of sheer necessity.

Kevin Hart, the actor who plays Darnell, is not in dire need of any amount of money so it’s mind-blowing that he agreed to be a part of a movie that perpetuates stereotypes while trying to be clever by painting Darnell as the exception to the rule -that some black people aren’t criminals. Throughout the film we see Latino people portrayed as the labourers in James King’s house, Black people as gang-bangers, gay people as desperate/relentless and White people as affluent (except for when the Neo-Nazi’s appear and the obvious, but unnecessary use of the word nigger occurs). James King teaches the gang-bangers (who are portrayed as incapable of grasping the concept of making their money work for them) how to make money without violence and murder! King even finds love with his ass-shaking black girlfriend.

Yes, I watched the film in its entirety, I might have even become a stereotype and possibly disrupted a few moviegoers by saying “this movie is racist”, but the truth is that so much of what I watched was unnecessary and incredibly offensive. A movie with Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell as leads did not need to resort to offensive depictions of already marginalized people to be profitable. I’m not sure what their goal was, if it was trying to make people laugh they succeeded in making people of colour look like a joke. Re-creating stereotypes DOES NOT DISPEL THEM – no matter how clever you think you’re being.

I think the saddest part is that people will watch this movie and feel like they got their money’s worth, they’ll unknowingly interpret these representations as accurate (not the over-exaggerated and generalized images that they truly are), and life will go on; film-makers will continue to perpetuate these inaccurate and unequal representations and reap the rewards of ignorance. What a shame, that by attempting to maintain universal appeal Kevin Hart is now a part of the problem and not a part of the solution.