If Will Ferrell has Bill Murray‘s cell number, it might be time for him to make that call.
Ferrell, a former Saturday Night Live cast member is beloved for his time on the late night variety show and heralded for several popular comedy films in the first decade or so of the 21st century. But he’s gone off course in recent years. It may be time for him to follow the strategy that Murray adopted: abandon the over-the-top, sophomoric humor and instead find roles in well-written films helmed by talented directors.
In the last 30 years, Murray has added several superb entries onto his IMDB sheet, including roles in Groundhog Day, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation (for which he earned a nomination for an Academy Award), Moonrise Kingdom, St. Vincent, and The Monuments Men.
Murray has long since transitioned from an over-the-top, goofy, face-scrunching, wise-cracking funny man into a subdued character actor and sometime leading man with depth.
The Hawk is a stinker
But Ferrell, as he shows in The Hawk, is still playing the same old songs from his catalog. In the show, which debuted in mid-July on Netflix and co-stars Luke Wilson, Ferrell is his usual loud, outrageous self. And for perhaps the first time in his career, Ferrell is seriously unfunny. The Hawk deserves every golf-themed critique it gets. “An errant shot,” a “a double-bogey,” or “trapped in the bunker.” Whatever you want to say, The Hawk has it coming.
All 10 episodes of The Hawk were released on the streaming service on July 16. From the first minutes of the first episode, the show is trying much to hard to draw laughs that do not come. For the most part, The Hawk plays out like a bargain-basement “B movie” that’s reaching to be like a classic Will Ferrell film. Except this series has Will Ferrell. And somehow, he’s not funny. He’s annoying and irredeemable instead.
The painfully bad part of The Hawk is that Ferrell’s character does things no person would ever do, and all of those things are shitty. His character, Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, is a shitty father. He’s a shitty husband. He’s a shitty friend. He’s a shitty business partner. He’s a shitty role model. And he’s a shitty golfer, which is clearly the least of his problems.
Hawkins doesn’t give you any reason to root for his attempted comeback on the PGA Tour. In scenes where Ferrell is doing his well-known self-obsessed character work, it isn’t funny like in Anchorman or Talladega Nights. And there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that Ferrell gives Hawkins that makes us want to watch this show. Not one episode in, not three episodes in, and not 10 episodes deep. It’s just ridiculous, unfunny behavior.
One of the only fine performances in The Hawk comes from Molly Shannon, who plays Ferrell’s ex-wife. But even that is buried under bad writing and even worse execution from everyone else on the screen. Wilson is wasted here, and given basically nothing beyond reaction shots to Ferrell’s unhinged and unattractive Hawkins.
It’s time for Will to change his course on screen
Ferrell is now 59 years old. He’s been a former SNL cast member for almost a quarter of a century. But, with very few exceptions, the actor has chosen to be a big, cocky, and/or ridiculous oaf in almost every role he’s taken in his film career. That’s resulted in a handful of classic comedies: Old School, Elf, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Step Brothers. But, a string of duds or lesser-comedies have followed.
In 2009, on the heels of Step Brothers, Ferrell starred in Land of the Lost, a movie that underperformed its budget by more than $30 million. His next comedy was The Other Guys, with co-star Mark Wahlberg. It did well at the box office, but pales in comparison to his earlier work on the big screen.
The second Anchorman movie has a 52% on the Popcorn Meter on Rotten Tomatoes. That compares unfavorably to the first movie in that franchise, which came in at 86%. Clearly by 2013, audiences were growing a bit tired of the same old same old from Ferrell.
The Daddy’s Home movies and a pitiful Sherlock Holmes movie followed, and none of those reached anywhere near the level of Ferrell’s filmography from the early 2000s. Somehow, Ferrell, who is generally well liked and respected, has drifted far afield from the cultural funny bone.
Last week, days before the release of The Hawk, Ferrell and Wilson appeared on the Netflix broadcast of the MLB Home Run Derby. That performance was as cringey as his new show.
There could be a course correction for Ferrell, who SNL Rankings chooses as the No. 3 all-time cast member in SNL history. Like Murray and to a lesser extent Adam Sandler, Ferrell could seek roles where he can be a fully fleshed out human being instead of a recycled version of characters we’ve seen him in countless times. It’s time to retire “Get off the shed!” acting and look for ways to be more serious or thoughtful, maybe even whimsical. That doesn’t mean Ferrell needs to be a a stiff. He’s still a funny man. But, he’d be better served to do a roles like he occupied in Stranger Than Fiction or Everything Must Go, where he portrayed middle-aged men with some sort of existential crisis. He also has the chops to be very good in ensemble work, rather than leading a film or series that has a nearly 60-year old man acting like an adolescent all the time. Jerry Lewis tried to be the “Nutty Professor” in almost every film far, far too late into his career. That fate isn’t graceful.
Here’s to Will Ferrell making a pivot and finding his next hit. It’s definitely not The Hawk.
Tell us what you think of The Hawk and Will Ferrell in the comments below.
