My wife and I went to the movies tonight, and they showed a preview for Anchorman 2. At the end of it, I leaned over and told my wife “I’d rather get a colonoscopy than see that, and I’m not kidding!” And I wasn’t.
I have never, not once, laughed at anything Ferrell has done. I remember him in the first Austin Powers movie, and it felt like the movie came to a dead stop while he did his Mustafa character. He was like a vacuum, sucking all the funny out of the movie until he finally got off the screen. Since then, I still haven’t seen him do anything I found funny.
Granted, I have not seen any of the movies in which he has starred, but that’s primarily due to his presence in them. The closest thing to a tolerable appearance was as the designer in Zoolander, but even that was… not good. A friend has told me “Well, you have to see him in Elf; he’s great in that!”. But I haven’t seen it, because I don’t want to think less of my friend since I am likely to hate the movie.
I think I don’t like him because of the way he just seems to overact - “Look, I’m bring FUNNY now… See, I’m FUNNY!” The Anchorman 2 trailer was probably the worst trailer I have ever seen. - morons acting moronic in moronic situations. And they are still doing a cruise control joke? Those were passe about a week after cruise control came out.
So, explain to me how Mr. Ferrell is a genius, and I’m getting his humor all wrong. The guy has millions of fans; please explain his appeal, because I sure can’t.
The one movie where I think he did his best work was The Producers. Try that one on for size.
As for why he’s funny? All I can say is that he’s silly, doing the outrageous stuff better than Adam Sandler, still giving a crap. It’s really hard to describe why he was funny.
I will say that the straight men he surrounds himself with can make or break him, though.
I enjoyed a lot of what he did on SNL but I find his movies pretty awful. So many people I know adore “Anchorman” and I hated it. It was so bad I actually walked out of a free screening when it was first released.
I think Ferrell is brilliant. I think he’s funny but I also respect the way he’s willing to totally commit to a character - something which most performers are afraid to do.
Ditto to the OP; I’m another who has never found Ferrell funny. I never even liked him much on SNL. I thought his GW Bush was one of the lamer presidential impressions they have done, especially following on the heels of Darrell Hammond’s Clinton and Dana Carvey’s Bush Sr. Most of my friends scratch their heads when I tell them I don’t care for Ferrell, but, sorry, folks, I’m just not seeing the humor.
Yeah, humor is 100% personal taste. I don’t find George Lopez funny but a lot of people think he is hilarious. I find Jerry Seinfeld (his standup, not just his TV career) funny, while a lot of people think he’s bland. Humor is personal taste.
That being said, as someone like the OP who dislikes about 95% of what Will Ferrell has done I will say I find him funny in the following scenarios:
-His bit part in Wedding Crashers
-His supporting role in Old School
-Occasional skits of his in his SNL days
Interestingly I actually thought Anchorman was funny, but felt it was more a “movie itself is funny, while Ferrell himself, despite being the headliner and in all the scenes isn’t all that funny in it himself.” It’s more the rest of the cast, their reactions to Ferrell etc that are funny.
I’ll also give a similar nod to Adam Sandler, like an earlier poster I can’t stand the guy, but I really think Happy Gilmore is a funny movie. Even in HG the stuff I hate about Sandler is present (mainly that his brand of comedy is just playing a character that gets angry all the time in an obnoxious and unfunny way) but HG itself is still a movie I find funny. There’s a lot of people that dislike Adam Sandler who will say “but I do like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison”, and those are his only two movies that are at all watchable. But for me Billy Madison only has a few funny parts (like the quiz/athletic challenge versus Bradly Whitford near the end) and the overall movie isn’t that fun to watch.
I really preferred Phil Hartman as Clinton, in the early days of the Clinton Presidency his skit with Clinton going into McDonald’s and eating food off everyone’s trays was hilarious. Dana Carvey’s Bush Sr. and Ross Perot were great. What’s odd is I liked basically every skit Carvey was in on SNL, but absolutely hated anything he’s done after SNL to the point I won’t even consider wanting to see something with Carvey in it. But then, I don’t know that I’ve even heard of him doing movies in years.
You’re not alone. He doesn’t impress me all that much. He was tolerable in The Producers, but he had good material that had been tested and not specifically written for him.