2024 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Will & Harper
Will Ferrell is one of the great comedic actors of the 2000s, starring in iconic comedies like Old School, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy, and The Other Guys. Will & Harper finds Ferrell in a new light as he is at the center of director Josh Greenbaum’s documentary as Ferrell and his best friend of thirty years Harper Steele take a cross-country road trip together following Steele coming out to Ferrell and transgender. The purpose of the trip is for Ferrell to ask questions he may have for Steele while they also explore dive bars in small towns (Steele loved going to these kinds of bars) that may not be as accepting of someone being transgender.
Will & Harper plays best when it is a buddy road documentary and barely scratches the surface about what it means to be transgender in your sixties and how someone feels finding out their friend of thirty years is transgender. Watching Ferrell and Steele travel across the US was a lot of fun and you feel their love and bond together. The inside jokes they have, how they can make fun of each other, and the stories they can tell from their years of working together on Saturday Night Live and several movies were a lot of fun to watch.
Some of the scenes, particularly when they were still in New York City before they started their travels, felt a lot like we were watching Ferrell show all his famous friends. There is a scene where Ferrell and Steele are out to lunch with SNL alums Tina Fey, Colin Jost, Tracy Morgan, Seth Meyers, and more. Ferrell also gives a call to actress Kristen Wiig for her to write a theme song for Ferrell and Steele’s trip and meet up with Molly Shannon to get pedicures. It’s all fun and adds additional humor to the film, but it came to an “alright, we get it, you’re famous” point.
I was hoping this movie would have given more insight into the transgender experience and what it meant for Ferrell to have his best friend of thirty years come out as transgender and that he would ask more questions, or they would have deeper conversations about the whole situation. They briefly touch on the issue every so often and Ferrell asks a couple of questions that we sort of insightful, but there wasn’t anything in here that helped me learn more about the transgender experience.
The best scene in the movie comes when Ferrell and Steele are having dinner at a steakhouse in a southern state (I forgot which one as of this writing). Ferrell dresses in his costume from Holmes & Watson (it’s hilarious that he has the costume from arguably his worst movie) and starts talking like Sherlock Holmes at dinner, which draws a lot of eyes and attention to their table. The following day, pictures of Ferrell and Steele are all over social media, with mean comments about Steele’s appearance. Farrell breaks down crying and talks about how he should have protected Steele better and known better. This was Ferrell at his most vulnerable and one of the only scenes that showed him going through a real learning experience. I was begging for more scenes like this, but unfortunately, this is the only one we got.
It’s too long and is very light on diving into the transgender experience and the experience of someone whose long-time friend has just come out as transgender in their sixties. But, Will & Harper is also a very sweet movie with plenty of humor about the bond of friendship and showcasing small-town America.
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