Kevin Hart's Funny 'Boyz n the Hood' Homage in 'Get Hard'
One of the recurring jokes in Get Hard — apart from all the controversial gags about prison rape — is that Will Ferrell’s character, a rich white guy named James King, knows next to nothing about black culture. That’s why he assumes that the African-American man who washes his car, Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart), has been to prison, even though the budding businessman has a rap sheet as clean as one of the windshield’s he’s washed. Throughout the movie, Darnell is able to exploit that ignorance to his own gain, getting hired to serve as James’s “trainer” for an impending prison sentence and imparting lessons about life on the inside that he’s picked up from other, real convicts like his cousin (rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris).
James’s exposure to black culture is so limited, he hasn’t even seen one of the defining African-American movies of the past two decades: John Singleton’s 1991 debut, Boyz n the Hood, for which he received a Best Director nomination. With a Rotten Tomatoes rating that’s currently hovering at 32 percent, Get Hard hasn’t hit a lot of critics’ funny bones. But there is one scene that’s legitimately amusing: when Darnell appropriates a defining moment from Boyz — the death of future football star Ricky (Morris Chestnut) — and tries to pass it off as his own life, with him standing in as Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Tre. While James listens entranced, Darnell describes how he, Ricky, and Doughboy (played by Ice Cube in Boyz) were childhood pals living in tough surroundings, but Ricky “had a ticket out.” That is, until he ran afoul of a gangster who gunned him down in an alley. His recitation of that pivotal sequence brings tears to James’s eyes…and makes Darnell’s wife and daughter roll theirs, since they totally know what movie he’s cribbing from.
Watch the original ‘Boyz n the Hood’ scene:
This sequence works not just because Hart’s recitation of it is so funny — and amazingly accurate in its detail — but also because it’s a reminder of how that scene, and the film as a whole, continues to linger in the cultural imagination. Singleton’s career has arguably never lived up to the promise of his debut, but Boyz was a case of the right film at the right time. “I think people still talk about Boyz n the Hood because it’s part of who they are, even if they’re not from that environment,” said Singleton in a 2011 interview with MTV on the film’s 20th anniversary. “Ultimately, the movie is a coming-of-age movie.”
Of course, there’s one nagging detail about Ricky’s death that Singleton — as well as Hart, for that matter — fail to address. Why doesn't Ricky zig zag to avoid the assassin’s bullet instead of running in a straight line? TMZ pitched the question directly to Chestnut himself in this impromptu interview outside a Rite Aid. “I think he did it so we could have an interesting ending to a movie,” the actor replies, without missing a beat. Sounds like Hart and Chestnut need to debate this subject in Get Hard 2.
