Zoolander (2001)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, as I was watching it, I was surprised to realize that bits of the movie had drifted into my vernacular over the years. Any time I hear the world derelict, I want to put the accent on the wrong syllable. Mer-man. Crazy pills. The film has far more sticking power than I would have thought.

Did I Like It: It’s humor still holds up reasonably well, which probably elevates it above many of the other comedies of the era. We may try to forget the movie after the rather odious sequel (a film I couldn’t even bring myself to finish) but giving it another shot is bound to give you some degree of enjoyment. It may not be at the level of some of Stiller’s other, more cerebral work like The Cable Guy (1996) or Severance, but if we judge every film for not having any sort of idea behind it, we probably wouldn’t watch much of anything anymore.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s my one irretrievable problem with the movie. I’m not going to name any names*, but I was supremely not in any sort of mood to laugh after hearing from the fourth person in the movie to have any dialogue. You’ll know the moment when you see it**. He shows up in all sorts of movies during this era. And I can’t help but wonder if there is truly nothing—from the “On Our Own” music video from Ghostbusters II (1989) to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—that this guy can’t ruin just by showing up. That’s clearly not Stiller’s fault, but one wonders if those odious platforms designed to edit out any sort of adult content from films could actually be re-directed to doing something useful.

*If for no other reason than one does want to avoid getting into an equal time problem…

**If you don’t know the moment, then you may need to re-think large portions of your life.

Holmes & Watson (2018)

Director: Etan Cohen

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Rebecca Hall, Ralph Fiennes

Have I Seen it Before: No. It feels like a weird time. I live in an age when it takes something to get me out to the theater (indeed, I have only been once since I was vaccinated in April). In the before times, I’d go see anything, and I didn’t even need a Moviepass to convince me. Despite enjoying Ferrell and Reilly, and being—if a bit of neophyte—a Holmesian at heart, this one missed me.

The word of mouth was truly that toxic. 

Did I Like It: The notion of a comedy Sherlock Holmes film is not a bad one. Without a Clue (1988) performed that beyond a doubt. Even this film, on spec, wasn’t a terrible idea for the many, many years it languished in development hell. Originally, it would have had Ferrell as Watson and Sacha Baron Cohen as Holmes. That’s actually pretty great casting. That film could have turned out fine, if the anarchic spirit of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) would have brought to its full potential.

That is not the cast we got. Nor is it the film we got.

Reilly can cut the right sort of Nigel Bruce-esque buffoon that is the instinct of many who approach Baker Street, but Ferrell, on spec, isn’t in the slightest bit Holmes. His whole comedic personae is based on the screaming, overconfident idiot. Holmes can be an idiot, but he needs to always look like he’s trying to figure things out. Baron Cohen could have done that in his sleep.

It might feel reductive to judge what is clearly meant to be a comedy by “how many times I laughed,” but when I know it was no more than twice, with one of them being in the title card, that’s not a great jumping off point for discussing the film.

Also, that Billy Zane cameo was such a drag, and stuck out like such a sore thumb, I couldn’t even recommend the film as the kind of thing you could benignly play in the background and ignore.

It is a failure. Go watch Without a Clue, which I might very well do now that I’ve thought about it far more than the film in question here.

The Lego Movie (2014)

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, certainly. The theatrical release coincided with my most recent dip into the wild world of LEGO. I’ve taken another dip recently, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also because they have finally relented to the wishes I never even knew I had and are releasing a LEGO typewriter quite soon.

Did I Like It: It’s a pretty dumb idea for a movie, and one that has become all-too-prevalent in the movies over the last few decades. Take anything. Any property which people will automatically recognize and already has the potential for endless tie-in products. Doesn’t matter is if it has no narrative that one can find. Dust off some rudimentary Joseph Campbell. And you’ve got yourself a movie. After Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)—to say nothing of its sequels—and Batman (1989) it irretrievably became a governing principle of Hollywood production.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like—hell, border on psychotically love—both of those films. Those films had narratives to tap into or create. The problems started when the experiment got out of the lab and anything was worthy of a feature film. You can get upset with this assessment if you like, but aside from Madeline Khan, Clue (1985) isn’t as good as you remember it. This doesn’t even cover the journeys into the inexplicable that were Ouija (2014) and Battleship (2012). Even the Pirates of the Caribbean films started off strong, but almost immediately descended into the basest forms of corporate synergy that one would have assumed they would always be.

And so, too, it could have been with The Lego Movie. But it wasn’t. Lord and Miller take their unique skills that actually made 21 Jump Street (2012) a watchable film and make a movie meant to market toys—delightful and engaging though they may be—and make it a revolutionary notion in simultaneous support of embracing the inner spark of creative anarchy and holding in high esteem the virtue of collective action.

It’s a children’s movie that should never have gotten the green light from a major studio, to say nothing of the board of directors of a toy company with shareholders to consider. Every once in a while film can harness something that surpasses the commercial necessities of producing pieces of art at such a high level.

That this worked so brilliantly—and not a little bit hilariously—almost makes the fact that they tried to make a movie out of Super Mario Bros. (1993) worth all the trouble.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell

Have I Seen it Before: Seeing this film for the first time in the summer of 2004 was one of those special screenings. I don’t remember laughing that hard at a movie before, and I can’t think of a time since, either. 

Did I Like It: But that’s the thing about a comedy. It can age horribly, not just because the jokes are from a different time, but because the version of you that enjoyed the film so much is an increasingly dim memory.

Who would have thought that a review for a movie that insists “San Diego” means “a whale’s vagina”?

I watch the film now and I have some mildly positive feelings about it, but that’s still largely memories of that summer 17 years ago. Maybe the film is just a bit too quotable. With so many movies that land on the tips of the tongues of every frat guy in the western world, the film may have grown tired and old by New Year’s Day 2005. 

That’s a shame, because I remember this film delighting me beyond all measure. Now, it’s mildly diverting background noise. It’s probably not fair to judge the films on those terms. McKay and Judd Apatow probably didn’t count on the film being so loved in the instant of its release that there would be thousands of Facebook groups within the year called “I’m kind of a big deal”, they certainly didn’t bargain for a guy staring down the barrel of his 40th birthday occasionally feeling wistful for 20.

The soundtrack—where Ferrell, in character as Burgundy uncontrollably weeps throughout “Shannon”—has still got to be as funny as it was back then, right?

Step Brothers (2008)

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes

Did I Like It: Fuck it, yes I did. Don’t @ me.

People have been down on Will Ferrell forever. His humor is just yelling, they’d say. It’s just men acting like children with nothing more to show for itself, they’d groan. The only good movie Ferrell has ever made is Stranger Than Fiction (2006)*.

Well, they’re full of donkey shit.

Maybe this movie has me riled up 

There will come a time when I will somehow be compelled to watch Holmes & Watson (2018). It’s probably going to be when it shows up on some service I’ve already paid for. I also imagine that I’m going to hate it. That’s because the particular kind of party that Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly is over. But here, before McKay made the transition to semi-serious political satirist, the “let the camera run” semi-improv movie is still a delight. I’m laughing fairly regularly, and it isn’t like they are promising anything else.

Or, at least, it’s a delight for a little bit. This free association in this film isn’t really done anymore, and this might be the turning point of diminishing returns. Somewhere around the time Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) decide their best friends that I’m not sure the film even attempts any kind of believability. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the film isn’t interested in believability in the early goings, but the strange affectations of the characters keep things going for the first act. It’s a ten-to-one SNL sketch extended to 98 minutes. Kind of like how I’ve tried to extend the word count of this review to a reasonable length.

Maybe I’m not the same arrested adolescent that really liked these movies. That’s a pretty big maybe.

*That one is mostly my wife. For the record, she is not full of any type of shit up to and including donkey.