Anchored Man
Will Ferrell should stop playing the same role over and over again.
By Jordan Michael Smith
March 31, 2008
Will Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon in Semi-Pro.A poster for the Will Ferrell comedy Semi-Pro shows the former SNL star in a flamboyant 1970s-era American Basketball League uniform, complete with short shorts and orange-and-white wristbands. Along with the movie’s tagline, “The Greatest Fro on Earth,” the poster summarizes all that is wrong with Ferrell and his career. Semi-Pro tells the story of Ferrell’s character Jackie Moon, a player/coach/owner for the Flint Tropics of the (now-defunct) American Basketball Association, who has delusions of grandeur about his talents and his teammates. Moon is a moron who yells, swears, and fights a great deal, spouts non sequiturs and outdated catchphrases, and removes his shirt on multiple occasions. Sound familiar? It should. Ferrell has played outrageous, paroxysm-susceptible figures in Anchorman and Zoolander. He’s been the idiot in A Night at the Roxbury and Old School. And he’s been playing on his body, which is more awkward-looking than most, since his SNL days.
SNL has long served as a farm club for one-dimensional actors, of course (think Rob Schneider and David Spade), so Ferrell’s shtick is nothing new. But what makes Ferrell’s career trajectory a unique disappointment is that he has more talent than his output so far would seem to indicate. It’s almost hard to remember in the wake of his most recent films, but Ferrell played an enormous range of characters on SNL, proving himself to be the most versatile cast member since Dan Aykroyd and the late Phil Hartman. Plastic talk-show host, goody-two-shoes cheerleader, psychopathic office-manager—Ferrell could do it all, and often without needing to be the center of attention. Though he’s become known for screaming and body hair, he’s more effective as an actor when he dials down the zaniness and embraces subtlety and nuance.
Ferrell’s impression of George W. Bush is a case in point. Honed to perfection on SNL and extended into hilarious shorts before the 2004 presidential election, Ferrell brilliantly captured the president’s essential cluelessness. Former SNL writer Tina Fey once said that Farrell’s Bush was almost likable, which was telling. The defining characteristic of Bush’s persona is not just his dumbness, which plenty of lesser caricaturists highlight, but also the persistent likeability that even many of his numerous detractors have grudgingly acknowledged. Bush seems like a little boy in an adult’s job, which may be baffling and infuriating, but leaves him seeming innocent—you can’t hate a child, can you? Ferrell’s Bush capturedthat, and was a perfect example of the nuance of which he’s capable.
Ferrell also hinted at greater range in Woody Allen’s Melinda, Melinda and, especially, in Stranger Than Fiction. Melinda, Melinda was an unfunny comedy, which actually worked to Ferrell’s benefit, because it allowed him to calm down and play his likable Everyman, which he hadn’t done since his SNL days. But it isStranger Than Fiction that best hints at what Ferrell’s dramatic potential. Ferrell manages, in that film, to infuse the dispirited IRS agent Harold Crick with a beautiful melancholy that turns the stereotype of the bland, button-down American worker inside-out. Whereas Michael Douglas’s William Foster in Falling Down and Stephen Root’s Milton Waddams in Office Space were spiteful and violent, Ferrell’s anonymous, alienated bureaucrat is sensitive and self-sacrificing. Stranger Than Fiction bore more than a few resemblances to Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but where Jim Carrey’s movingly sad-but-sweet lead performance was predictable after he showed his chops in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, Ferrell’s came as a revelation to critics who thought he couldn’t do much besides explore the studio space with a cowbell.
It’s clear Ferrell is a master of outburst-based comedy, and he’s also proved himself to be a more than adequate dramatic actor. But history suggests that if he wants to be taken seriously as a multifaceted movie star—and maybe he doesn’t; there’d be nothing wrong with that—it’s time for him to step up his game a bit. Of the few actors who can carry both a comedic and a dramatic film, few have had an easy time navigating between the two genres. There doesn’t seem to be much back-and-forth. Carrey felt typecast and stunted after his comedic roles In Living Color, Ace Ventura, and Dumb and Dumber and, after moving into drama, he’s been unable to successfully move back. Tom Hanks, who made movies like The ‘Burbs and Splash before he became the new Jimmy Stewart, has not starred in a funny flick in years. The same goes for Robin Williams, Bill Murray, and Adam Sandler. Eventually comedians either exhaust their comic possibilities and move to drama, or continually make mediocre films. Ferrell seems to be taking the latter route; his movies are getting worse and he’s playing more or less the same character in every one as he plucks lower- and lower-hanging fruit. (Semi-Pro takes aim at the bright colors and large furs of 1970s fashion, and at nerdy white guys surrounded by black culture. These are about the easiest targets one could find.) Moreover, Semi-Pro is the fourth sports comedy Ferrell has made in nearly as many years (a pabulum-laced foursome also consisting of Blades of Glory, Talladega Nights, and Kicking and Screaming). When an interviewer from The Onion’s A.V. Club pointed out this streak out to him, Ferrell joked that “I’m trying to totally exhaust people’s capacity for seeing me in these types of movies.” He has succeeded. No one’s denying that he was quite funny in Old School and Anchorman, but it’s time to move on.
But, like an overgrown cheerleader or a famous anchorman who still has to wear headgear to bed, moving on is not a strong suit of Ferrell’s. His next movie is Step-Brothers. Again, Anchorman director Adam MacKay is behind the camera, and again, Ferrell is starring alongside Talladega Nights co-star John C. Reilly. Step-Brothers is a film about two ultra-immature grown-up children who have to live in the same bedroom after their respective single parents become married. Sounds like the perfect role for Ferrell, and a perfectly predictable one, too.
Jordan Michael Smith is an Editorial Intern at The American Prospect.
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Comments
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Thank you for saying what I have been thinking for the last 5 years!
— Ali M Latifi - Mar 31, 12:45 PM - #Thanks for such an important analysis! Our society’s about to collapse and Campus Progress is wasting its great talent on bullshit distractions like this. Maybe I’m on the wrong website. We need humor and entertainment, but not this. How disappointing…
— publius2012 - Apr 3, 05:22 PM - #publius, don’t you think there’s any connection between the dumbing down of popular culture and our society’s inability to hold its leaders to account, even as they march towards yet another disastrous war? There’s lots of articles on politics on Campus Progress, but some cultural analysis is important too. I agree with the author. Ferrell’s talent is being wasted on mindless garbage.
— darneveryone - Apr 3, 06:15 PM - #I absolutely agree with you, except for the part about Bill Murray not being funny any more.
“Get them in your cross hairs and take them down.”
— Daniel - Apr 3, 10:00 PM - #