The 2008 role Will Ferrell is trying his hardest not to reprise: “You have to resist the temptation”
“If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor,” sang Tim Booth in James’ 1990 hit ‘Sit Down’, and it’s what immediately sprung to mind watching the trailer for the latest comedy series from Will Ferrell, called The Hawk.
Because it looks spectacularly bad, and only serves as a reminder of what Ferrell used to be capable of in the ten years or so between his time on SNL and his buddy cop comedy The Other Guys with Mark Wahlberg in 2010.
The Hawk hits Netflix on July 16th, and is a comedy about a professional golfer, which might make you think about the fact Adam Sandler has already done Happy Gilmore exactly 30 years ago, and you’d be right to think that, because it was much, much better than The Hawk, will be going by the trailer alone, in which Ferrell just shouts a lot, rolls around a bit in some sand and gets an erection exactly the same way he did in 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
Remember then? Back when Ferrell made some brilliant, hilarious films? Aside from Anchorman, there was Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, there was 2003’s Christmas must-watch Elf, plus Blades of Glory with Jon Heder and the more dramatic, but still excellent, Stranger Than Fiction from 2006 opposite Emma Thompson.
Sitting above all of those, however, is the astonishingly funny, utterly chaotic and perfectly puerile Step Brothers from 2008, a film which manages to actually get funnier with every year that passes and saw Ferrell and John C Reilly shoved together as adult roommates with disastrous results.
There are so many genius, properly laugh-out-loud moments that it’s impossible to list them. But just for a taster, there’s the bunkbed collapsing, the long fart in the interview, the ‘boats ‘n’ hoes’ rap/crash, the ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ singalong, the drum set fight, it’s endless. Adam Scott is brilliant in it too. As is Kathryn Hahn. All the actors, in fact, do their bit to contribute to what has to be the funniest film of the 2000s.
That being the case, it’s not a surprise that in the 18 years since it was released, lots of people have hoped there might be a sequel on the way at some point. But sadly, it seems Ferrell is not going to go there, telling Rolling Stone back in 2017: “You have to resist the temptation. It’s just tough because the things everyone wants you to do sequels of are special because there’s not a sequel of it. I guess we’ll see, but as of now there are no plans. We just don’t want to be doing sequels of everything.”
The Hawk aside (who knows it might be OK), there is hope for Ferrell, however, because he does have some interesting projects coming up.
There’s Tough Guys, for one, in which he plays one of a pair of criminals alongside Ryan Gosling, which sounds interesting solely because Gosling doesn’t tend to ever take on bad scripts. And then there’s Judgment Day, which again has promise thanks to its premise: a newly-released prisoner taking over a televised courtroom and taking hostages while haranguing the judge for putting him in prison in the first place.
