BEING WILL FERRELL
by Daren Foster

***Will Ferrell's funny. Is he as funny as he should be?***

I’ve been thinking of Will Ferrell.

In these dark days of economic, political and social turmoil maybe my mind should be on matters more urgent and pressing. Perhaps thinking about Will Ferrell is my way of avoiding the other, less happy thoughts. Pure and utter denial. So be it. I like playing in the shallow end of the pool, splashing around in my water wings.

As does Ferrell. He has set up shop, creatively speaking, smack dab in the middle of the kiddies’ pool. The proverbial man-child, Ferrell’s shtick is all about the unsuccessful containment of the id. Wanting so much to be taken seriously as a fully functioning adult yet he is subject to unrelenting outbursts of giddy petulance and childish exuberance. Emotionally and intellectually stunted, a Ferrell character masks his shortcomings with an oversized but eggshell fragile ego.

This explains the ease he has playing George W. Bush. Much of the previous paragraph could apply equally to the former President (I love writing that) with one main, vital and ultimately sad, sad difference. It is Ferrell’s performing alter ego while we had to actually endure such character failings in the honest-to-god, real life leader of the free world for 8 long years. As then Governor Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign, Ferrell catapulted himself from merely another SNL Not Ready For Primetime player (to date myself) into breakout star.

He is back at it with a new HBO special, Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome America -- A Final Night with George W. Bush. Part stand-up, part one-man theatre piece, the show attempts to deliver one last nasty kick in the nuts to Dubya’s already dubious legacy. At times hysterically funny, You’re Welcome.. never fully develops into a totally satisfying endeavour, choosing instead to settle for a scattershot, drive-by approach to character assassination. Ferrell can’t really bring himself to deliver the killing blow and totally eviscerate Bush. To do that, he would reveal his target as being completely and utterly unlikable and Ferrell never seems able to allow any character he plays to be ultimately unlikable. It may reflect badly on the Will Ferrell brand.

This inability on Ferrell’s part to fully let go and let loose, while ensuring him legions of fans and millions of dollars, is also what separates him from true comedic greatness. It is a product of modern Hollywood, this idea of equating likability to bankability. Chaplin’s Little Tramp was many things, but likeable is not one that springs immediately to mind. Of the Marx Brothers, only Zeppo might’ve been thought to be likable. He certainly wasn’t funny. Cary Grant was suave and sophisticated and an out-and-out matinee idol but his comedic genius did not stem from his likability. In two of his greatest roles, as C.K. Dexter Haven in The Philadelphia Story and Walter Burns in His Girl Friday, Grant plays a scheming, conniving albeit smooth-operating home wrecker. At his best, Woody Allen was scream-inducingly grating at times and audiences laughed along.

Will Ferrell regularly struts right up to that line but refuses to cross it. Even the most loathsome of his characters must have some redeemable feature that somehow makes up for all of his repulsiveness. Only in Will Ferrell’s world would Ron Burgundy end up getting the girl especially one as smart and attractive as Christina Applegate’s Veronica Corningstone. Only in Will Ferrell’s world could two middle-aged lay-abouts reunite their estranged family with a song.

Actually that’s not entirely true. Most of Hollywood’s comedies these days are infected with the same disease. Characters wallow in the whole range of male idiosyncrasies and insecurities for laughs and still expect to prosper and wind up with the hot-looking, whip-smart woman in the end. Adam Sandler. Kevin James. Almost all of Judd Apatow’s creations. Only a 14 year-old boy thinks the world should work out that way. What 14 year-old boys want, Hollywood gives them.

As a product of that mindset, Ferrell caters to the desirable demographic, forgoing any sort of creative risk to simply pander. Most of his star vehicles are movies as bloated premises and variations on the theme of an over-the-hill.. whatever (NASCAR driver, figure skater, 70s one hit wonder turned basketball owner) who is forced by an eager upstart to face and overcome his failings no matter how preposterous. In fact, the more preposterous, the better. Overcome them he inevitably does and everyone lives happily ever after. It is the epitome of complacency and laziness.

In many respects, taking on George W. Bush these days could also be viewed as lazy and complacent. Yeah, yeah. We know the guy was thick and pettily cruel with a narcissistic sense of entitlement. We witnessed that for nearly a decade. Tell us something we don’t know.

But Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome America.. really isn’t interested in scratching below the surface. Instead it opts for envisioning an ex-President who would show a picture of his penis while on a speaking tour. Isn’t that exactly what Bush did in the flight suit aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to announce ‘Mission Accomplished’? Sorry, Will. We’ve been there, seen that.

There was a moment in the show when it seemed that maybe, just maybe, we might get to see a different Will Ferrell. He was explaining how the president froze for 7 minutes in front of the children he’d been reading to after being informed of the attacks on 9/11. Ferrell stopped and stared blankly, a clock started to tick. I thought, oh shit, he’s going whole hog on this one. He’s going to subject the audience to 7 minutes of nothing to make a point about just how unprepared Dubya was to be president. Good on him!

18 seconds later, lights went down, music came up and we were subjected to a gyrating secret service man. Ferrell’s mainstream instincts had kicked in and another possibility for something other than an easy joke had passed. Once more, Ferrell pulled back from the edge.

When I aired this complaint to an esteemed colleague of mine, he wondered if I might not be expecting Andy Kaufman instead of Will Ferrell. This is my point exactly. Until Ferrell embraces his inner Andy Kaufman, if he has an inner Andy Kaufman, he will remain little more than a humorous diversion. Yes, he will continue to rake in the big bucks for as long as he’s able to fill a movie theatre for a weekend or two. After that he’ll return to television to star in a sitcom that’ll last a few years. (Will Ferrell meet Bob Saget.) His work will be as ephemeral as the times they operate in. Greatness endures, even grows, over time. Greatness requires risk. To date, Will Ferrell has shown a marked aversion to risk.