Get Hard (2015)
Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart had to manage a storm of controversy around the release of this film; a lot of people thought it was pretty blatantly racist at worst, and tone-deaf at best. Their response wasn’t the best — basically, they were telling racist jokes to make fun of the people who would think that way. While I’ve been a defender of comedic boundaries before, I couldn’t say that I liked the rationalization for it. You can make fun of the mindset of racist people without resorting to racially-insensitive comedy; yeah, it’s more difficult, but good comedy is hard, right?
I was inclined to give this a miss until Ryan recommended it to me, and I’m actually glad he did. Get Hard is without a doubt a problematic comedy, but it’s also an incredibly funny one. I hadn’t been exposed to Kevin Hart very much before this, but I have to say I’m a fan at this point. Will Ferrell continues to find ways to refine and develop his stock comedic character so that while you know what you’re getting with him, there are always a few pleasant surprises in store.
Ferrell plays a hedge fund manager who is completely oblivious to the class divide that he embodies; he has an immense house, a super-hot wife who’s addicted to power, and is prepared to ascend to the highest echelons of the financial community. The insane lifestyle of James King is one that he feels he’s earned; he’s great at his job, put in his time, and is now reaping the expected rewards.
Hart is a struggling family man who just wants enough money for a down payment on a modest house in a better school district so that his daughter won’t have to go to an elementary school with metal detectors outside the front door. When King gets popped for fraud and threatened with a fairly intense jail sentence, he hires Hart’s Darnell Lewis to teach him to get ready for prison because being a black guy he had to have served time right? And we’re off to the races.
Through the first act and about half of the second, you’re actually ready to buy the excuses of Ferrell and Hart; James King is an astonishingly assinine person oblivious to the struggles of the people all around him and living a life of extraordinary wealth and privilege. The scenes where he actually has to deal with people outside of his bubble provides some hilarious and pointed social commentary. Darnell’s problems are only slightly exaggerated for comedic effect, but Hart plays him as earnest and relatable. When James and Darnell team up, it’s legitimately magical.
Then we get to Darnell’s cousin, Russell (played by the rapper T.I.) and then we’re suddenly in a much less comfortable place with the comedy. Russell is a member of the Crenshaw Kings, and Darnell thinks he might be able to convince the gang to protect James in prison. The usual “hoodrat black guys react to the whitest of the white guys” hijinks ensue and while it’s surprisingly funny it also undercuts the point the film tried to make up front — most black people (and other minorities) aren’t the stereotypes we make them out to be. By populating the rest of the film mostly with these exact stereotypes, the message comes across as fairly hollow.
Despite that, it’s still really funny. Get Hard is one of those films that I wish weren’t so easily dismissed because it could open up an interesting and necessary conversation about the prejudices even well-meaning but disconnected white folks have about minorities, and how the film’s ultimately letting James off the hook (his greatest crime is outstanding ignorance and that’s about it) doesn’t take its message far enough. It could have been so much more than it was, but what it was is actually pretty good.
The Martian (2015)
This movie is effectively anti-Gravity. Matt Damon is the title character, Mark Watney. During a months-long mission to Mars, a rather intense storm forces the astronauts to abandon their station in a hurry. Watney is hit by a piece of debris and goes flying off into the dust-storm; his vitals read as flat. The mission commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) is forced to abandon him, but surprise! Watney has survived, and now must find a way to survive until he is discovered and a mission to rescue him is organized.
What follows is an intense struggle to survive for Watney, and a series of jumping hurdles for his colleagues at NASA as they figure out just how they can help him across such great distances. While The Martian certainly pulls no punches detailing the inhospitable nature of space and other planets, it ultimately makes the case that human ingenuity, collaboration and willpower can overcome any problem — known or spontaneous — that the great void can throw at us. Watney is an inherently fascinating character; even though he’s on the mission as its chief botanist, he quickly learns how to turn his faculties towards doing whatever it takes to hold on until he can be rescued.
Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor are equally arresting as the various NASA administrators and engineers trying to bring Watney home. They have to navigate very real issues of time and budget constraints, political realities and public relations issues to figure out the best course of action. While it would have been lovely to imagine that NASA would be given unlimited funding and time to bring Watney home with the unwavering support of the public at their back, that simply isn’t the case. Forcing everyone involved to make do with less, we see the pressure everyone is under to find creative (and dangerous) solutions to accomplish what seems impossible.
In a lot of ways, the story of The Martian is the story of Gravity — a single astronaut stranded in the unforgiving void of space after a cataclysmic event leaves them without the necessities for survival. But while Gravity tightens its focus on Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone to explore the existential question of what motivates us to soldier on in the face of extreme difficulty and lingering trauma, The Martian pulls back to examine how we as human beings pull together in times of crisis to do amazing things we never thought we could. I think both films are uplifting for different reasons; Gravity tells us that we as individuals are stronger than we could ever believe, while The Martian tells us that we as a tribe are even smarter, stronger and more resilient than that. It’s really exciting to think about, and actually makes you want to see us living up to that potential.
Matt Damon is immensely charismatic here, and he pulls off the trick of effectively being alone through much of the film’s run time. Watney’s crewmates — including Chastain, Michael Pena, Mara Rooney and others — are competent and compassionate people, and watching them deal with the realization they’ve left a man behind is just as engrossing.
Director Ridley Scott, coming off a pretty bad pair of movies in Prometheus and Exodus: Gods and Kings, could have used a hit and I’m glad he’s found one here. Mars feels like a surprisingly interesting place under his lens — even though it’s foreboding and dangerous, it can also be beautiful in the sparse manner of, say, an Arizona desert. He keeps the action rolling forward, pausing for just long enough to get a sense of place here. I’m glad that we saw the movie in theatres; the landscape and sense of distance really tracks well on the big screen.
All in all, The Martian makes a good counterpoint to the steady stream of space disaster films we’ve been getting recently. Yeah, things go catastrophically wrong, but the triumph over adversity actually feels better than a successful mission that goes according to plan.
Quick Change (1990)
Between Ghostbusters II and Groundhog Day, Bill Murray starred in this overlooked gem of a movie that also starred Geena Davis (right before she was in Thelma and Louise) and Randy Quaid (one year out of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation). There are small parts in the film from Tony Shalhoub, Phil Hartman, Stanley Tucci and Kurtwood Smith (the dad on That 70s Show), and they’re all great. It also features quite possibly the greatest public bus driver in all of comedic film. And I’ve never heard of it until now.
Quick Change tells the story of a man named Grimm (Murray) so fed up with New York City that he decides to rob a bank to get out of town. The bank heist itself is pretty funny and twisty enough that I won’t say too much about it here, but the Grimm’s attempt to get away with his accomplices make up most of the film. The city itself seems to conspire against them, throwing its labyrinthine geography and endless supply of random kooks to keep them in town. Grimm and his compatriots keep getting pulled down into the murk of the city the closer they get to the airport.
Murray plays the jaded genius really well — no surprise there. His co-stars, Davis and Quaid, are pretty amazing too. Jason Robards is the crusty old police detective two days from retirement and charged with bringing them in. He’s jaded too, perhaps moreso than Grimm, but still believes enough in the rule of law to keep plugging away at an impossible, Sisyphean task.
The writing is whip-smart and surreal; the characters that Grimm and company come across own their scenes completely. From the taxi driver who doesn’t speak English to the bus driver with crippling OCD, to the random unhelpful sociopaths they meet in their travels, New York is populated with pretty amazing people all living their own stories. It’s both one of the best and worst things about pretty much any major city, and Quick Change captures it so well.
Another surprising thing about the movie is how prescient it is; one of the big reasons Murray wants to get out of the city is gentrification and development — new condos are going up on every block and pricing long-time residents out of the city. A huge plot point is the necessity of strapping the money to himself because terrorism has made airport security draconian and inconvenient. And the police are constantly missing their men because they’re getting caught up chasing down minorities.
The more I think about this film, the more I love it. Everyone’s at the top of their game; the story is surprising, engaging and actually driven by characters who are smart, funny and interesting; and this is one of the only movies actually directed by Murray himself. This is the first (and best) of three movies Murray collaborated on with his co-director and the writer of the film, Howard Franklin. If you’re a big Bill Murray fan who’s seen most of his Wes Anderson stuff, this is the movie for you.
