Review: Downhill

A marriage on the rocks is put to an extreme test when the family goes on a ski trip to the Austrian Alps. When the family encounters a sudden avalanche while having lunch at a restaurant, Ferrell ducks out of the way, grabbing only his phone and leaving his family behind. Everyone survives physically unharmed, but this instinctual selfishness does not go unnoticed by wife Julia Louis-Dreyfus or the kids and it lingers throughout the rest of the holiday. Not that Ferrell (who still hasn’t dealt with the recent loss of his father) doesn’t try to pretend that all is well and nothing happened. Yeah, you fucked up and you know it, pal. Miranda Otto plays the family’s randy, insistently self-appointed tour guide, whilst Giulo Berruti plays an overly friendly ski instructor, and Kristofer Hivju turns up late in the film as a safety officer of the hotel the family is staying at.

 

“The Green Lantern”. “Jonah Hex”. “The Happening”. “An American Haunting”. All widely reviled films with both critics and audiences, all four of them being films that I’ve given at least soft recommendations to. Well, now there’s another film to add to the list, this 2020 Americanised remake of the critically popular Scandinavian film “Force Majeure” by co-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (co-writers of the highly overrated “The Descendants”) and their co-writer Jesse Armstrong (“In the Loop”, “Four Lions”). Everyone hates this film it seems, and everyone who hates it compares it unfavourably with the original. Critics no likey when some Yankee Doodle Dandies remake one of their precious little European bon-bons, apparently. As for me, I don’t really do Scandinavian cinema (I’ve enjoyed many foreign language films but along with French cinema, I’m just not quite on the same wavelength as the Scandinavians it seems), so I’ve not yet seen the original film and can only judge this film on its own merits. I guess I’m a philistine. It’s absolutely no world beater, but I reckon there’s enough here to put it just slightly over the line into a very soft recommendation.

 

I think at least with audiences the problem here was more one of expectation. You see Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell in a movie and you expect a laugh riot. That’s not what this film is nor what it was designed to be. Although there is some bitter humour here and there, this is more of a dramatic piece. Or at least a very dark comedy. I knew largely what to expect going in, so I was prepared and ended up moderately pleased with what I got. The majority of the film’s humour is supplied by Miranda Otto, and she’s immediately good fun here as a very uninhibited hotel employee. You can tell she was having fun letting loose and being silly. I also thought Giulo Berruti was pretty good as the flirty ski instructor, as well. The other amusing performance here is a small one from “Game of Thrones” actor Kristofer Hivju, who is a riot. I also really liked the avalanche scene, which works both as comedy – Idiots taking a pic as it heads right for them, which I don’t quite find entirely unrealistic – and drama, as fed-up wife Julia Louis-Dreyfus realises that her emotionally checked-out husband Will Ferrell’s first instinct was to save himself, not her and the kids.

 

Louis-Dreyfus, who is usually great value, gets points merely for her reaction shots here, both comedic and dramatic. And although I found quite a few things to chuckle at here, at its heart I really don’t think this one was intended to be a laugh riot. This marriage is barely hanging by the slenderest of threads – if that. I really appreciated the film’s tinge of sadness and bitterness. These people are not happy and their marriage is not working. No one is communicating their true feelings. Will Ferrell for me has always been hit-and-miss as a comedian (I loathed the Spartan Cheerleaders on “SNL” but liked “Anchorman” and loved the more ambitious “Stranger Than Fiction”), but he’s got a kind of Steve Martin quality to him that lends itself rather well to more dramatic or at least loftier fare than say “A Night at the Roxbury” or “Semi Pro”, for instance. Here he’s playing the kind of comedy-drama role that in the 60s or 70s would’ve gone to an Alan Alda or George Segal, and it’s quite a nice fit for Ferrell as the somewhat reticent husband who has long checked out of the emotional commitment to his marriage. He’s going through the motions at best.

 

Black comedy/drama and discomfort comedy aren’t really my thing. However, there’s some amusement to be had here, and the two leads do quite well in the more dramatic scenes as well. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but I found this one better than average. My only issue was that it’s not terribly original, even for a remake. If the original is anything like this, it’s not terribly original either. Still, this is highly watchable for the right audience.

 

Rating: B-