When did Will Ferrell become the heavy?
In Barbie and The Lego Movie, Will Ferrell plays the fun police, which leads us to wonder: What happened to Buddy the Elf?
Film Features Ferrell
Warning: The following article discusses the plot of Barbie.
Buddy The Elf has grown up. Raised in the frat pack 2000s, Will Ferrell became the wide-eyed, full-throated id of masculine immaturity. From Buddy and Burgundy to a slew of cameos on Eastbound & Down and The Office, Ferrell became a cipher for male entitlement, able to ascend the ranks of any closed system despite a distinct lack of boundaries or composure. When he played Lord Business in 2014’s The Lego Movie, Ferrell gave us two sides of that coin: a petulant tyrant and an adult man ground down by a world he could not control. In Barbie, Ferrell goes for seconds, and, once again, playtime is over.
We’re not the first to notice the parallels between Barbie and The Lego Movie. Barbie director Greta Gerwig and Lego filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller thread near-impossible needles in adapting narrative-less toys and their meaning to the culture that played with them. But it’s hard to overlook that in both cases, Will Ferrell plays the heavy as a villainous stuffed shirt who wants to follow directions and—as in director Greta Gerwig’s film—put Barbie back in the box.
Ferrell ascended to the throne as king of the man-children in the early 2000s. Under the persona of a boisterous oaf, he led a string of hits, adjusting his ignorance level for the role. Through Elf’s Buddy and Step Brothers’ Brennan, Ferrell essentially played the same role in two different ways. In Elf, his innocent holiday spirit fuels Christmas cheer; in Step Brothers, that same sincerity is a parent’s worst nightmare.
The Lego Movie complicates this bedrock of Ferrell’s comedy by turning him into the face of adulthood. His dual role as Lord Business and the father who glues his Legos together so his son can’t play with them provides the film its central threat and emotional spine. For much of the movie, we only hear Ferrell through his animated Lego form, but when he’s revealed as “The Voice Upstairs,” the film weaponizes our experience with the actor. The audience’s recognition of Ferrell as this beloved large adult son does half the work for him, allowing Lego’s ending to hit harder because of our history with Ferrell. This is Ferrell’s Chazz Reinhold, 2004’s king of the wedding crashers, a man who would supposedly never grow old. A decade later, he’s gluing toys together.
Nearly a decade after Lego, Ferrell gets a promotion in Barbie. Lego and Barbie already have much in common, blending the worlds of play and reality. Like in Lego, when those lines are crossed, it’s Ferrell’s job to clean up the mess. Lord Business does so by super gluing Legos together, denying the player the fun of creation; the Mattel CEO wants to put Barbie back in her box before she does something weird, like visit a gynecologist. Ferrell doesn’t get the emotional reconciliation in Barbie, but he also isn’t treated like a threat. He’s treated like an impediment on par with Ron Burgundy, another touchy loudmouth who failed upwards unbeknownst to him.
While Gerwig doesn’t treat Ferrell’s character with overt hostility, it’s another clear example of him playing the immature adult in the room, and his worldview is pervasive. After a second act that’s very reminiscent of Elf, Barbie (Margot Robbie) returns to Barbie Land to find that Ken (Ryan Gosling) has turned her home into a Will Ferrell joke. His “Mojo Dojo Casa House’’ resembles a Burgundy-esque string of improvisational non-sequiturs. It’s oddly fitting that Ferrell would head a company that produces a line of dolls that act like Will Ferrell characters.
A strong comic persona ages with its performer. Bill Murray is a perfect example of this. As he aged, Murray’s sarcastic slacker grew into a lonely curmudgeon, left behind by the world that he rejected. Will Ferrell is going through a similar transition. We see his path from an overgrown man-child in Elf to a hapless suburban stepdad in Daddy’s Home. Like any great movie star performance, Will Ferrell’s casting comes with baggage that works in the movie’s favor. Just as there’s some Lord Business in the Mattel CEO, there’s some Buddy The Elf in the trailer for his upcoming fish-out-of-water talking-dog movie Strays. He brings that with him whenever he plays the heavy, allowing the audience an easy in without much explanation. He’s just doing his Will Ferrell thing.
73 Comments
Ctrl+F ‘Zoolander’ brings no results in an article about Will Ferrell playing the bad guy?
I did the same thing.
When did he become the heavy?
2001.
22 years ago.
I had to look up when Zoolander came out. I’m starting to feel old over here…
I hope you didn’t watch the sequel.
Nope!
wasn’t he the bad guy in a Jay and Bob film in 1999 or something
Actually, it was the month before when Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back came out.
That was not a very good movie so most of it has dropped from my memory.
Same thing. I was scanning the entire article over and over and… nope. No Mugatu to be found. The disrespect.
HE INVENTED THE PIANO KEY NECKTIE!
Sigh. This site used to have actual film buffs and critics, not just Content Writers who see and enjoy films about as regularly as any random Joe does.
Look through the archives for The Popcorn Champs by Tom Breihan. He details, in great accuracy and hilarious asides, the movie that won the most $$ at the box office for each year since the 60s. I usually read one per day to wax nostalgic about what this site used to be.
Oh, yeah. It’s like writing an article about Sir Alec Guinness’s excellent acting career, and just focusing on Star Wars and not mentioning The Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, his stuff with Ealing, or his highwater mark-performance: George Smiley, because that’s Boomer shit you haven’t heard of. As someone who’s unfortunately spent some time in the Content Mines, I recognise this article for what it is: AVC moved to Cali, needed writers ASAP, and just hired some random people who were willing to sweatshop, not necessarily who were the best qualified. They needed content fast, not quality. (I’ve forgotten what I had to write about warehouse shelving.)And this article reeks of that: someone with only a cursory knowledge of the subject, frantically googling and going off the top five results or so. I’m sure if you punch “Will Ferrell” into google, most of the articles would be things that fell under the current, Web 2.0-driven cultural zeitgeist, not Zoolander from before all that was a thing.I’m sure the writers watch movies, the way the manager from the shoe store down the road from you or your uncle watches movies. Most people do. But they wouldn’t be so presumptuous to consider themselves authorities worthy of writing thinkpieces.
God I miss his history of violence series.
I mean, he got his big break on SNL as this guy: Is there a bigger heavy in existence?
It’s over 20 years old, i.e., outside the purview of nu-AV Club writers.
Fair point.
I don’t think it’s fair, or reasonable, just the sad truth.
AI didn’t find when writing the article.
Those Malaysians have their fingers in the G/O Media pie, no doubt.
There’s a looseness that reads like AI wrote this article: it is singularly unfocused and never meanders its way to anything resembling a point.
Another example: I just re-watched the Between 2 Ferns movie…In the film, Will Ferrell plays a guy named Will Ferrell. A cocaine snorting, cruel, arrogant owner of “Funny Or Die” where his motivation is that he thinks Zack G is an embarrassment and wants to see him humiliated on TV.
Sometimes the chemistry between an actor and their characters just doesn’t work with certain viewers. I avoid anything with Ferrell in it. I can’t sit through bad comedy; he isn’t funny, just annoying. I’m going to see Barbie. I hope he doesn’t have too many scenes.
Will Ferrell can be good in non-Will Ferrell movies (see: Zoolander, The Producers, the aforementioned Lego Movie), but Will Ferrell Movies suck. They’re basically the Aughts equivalent of Adam Sandler movies.
The Other Guys with Mark Wahlberg is super underrated also. Hilarious movie.
Except Sandler kept doing his stupid movies during that time too. I think he’s still doing it, he and Chris rock filmed part of one across the street from my house a few years ago.
I avoided Elf for years for exactly that reason – I just couldn’t take his shouty man-child thing any more and assumed Elf would be him ad-libbing in a green North Pole outfit for two hours. Turned out of course I couldn’t have been more wrong, and so I’ve given him more chances in other things. He’s used perfectly in Step Brothers but bugged the shit out of me in his brief Wedding Crashers appearance. For me he’s the worst part of Old School but great as his own straight man in The Other Guys. He just needs a director who knows when to tell him to get back on-script or dial it back.
Almost everything he did with Adam McKay was good, because McKay knew how to make him play to his strengths. Anchorman is the best thing either of them has ever done (I could entertain an argument for Step Brothers).
You might like Stranger Than Fiction then. Its probably the most restrained performance he’s done.
Will Ferrell in ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ reminded me of Adam Sandler in ‘Punch Drunk Love’. The kind of performance which makes you say, “Wow. I didn’t know he could do that.”
I really liked him in Everything Must Go, too
I adore that movie and have watched it so many times.
Agree on “Old School” other than this. The oblivious Will Ferrell character ..
Obvious answer to the title: actors always like to play the villain.
No I didn’t bother to read the article.
It’s okay; no one really bothered to write it either.
Matt, get off the goddamn shed.
How soon we forget:
All that pleather and cologne…
I did not read the article because I plan on seeing Barbie, but Ferrell’s schtick has always been playing immature man-children. It was funny on SNL, Elf and Anchorman, kind of pathetic in Old School and Wedding Crashers and has had diminishing returns since. He works as a villain because immature man-children like that are supposed to be backwards dicks.Weirdly, Mugatu is an actual adult in an exaggerated version of a weird industry (fashion) and that role works. He also plays an actual adult in The Other Guys and I thought he was good in that.
Yeah, I kinda love how much as Mugatu is an eccentric character in Zoolander, he’s also somehow simultaneously the sanest person in the room.
Right after Zoolander complains about the Center for Ants and Mugatu looks around like “is this guy fucking serious?” and then swallows his pride and goes “he’s absolutely right” made me laugh audibly.
He’s also near 60 years old and looks like it. He can’t be suburban dad or the 40 year old man child anymore. But he can definitely stand in for a bumbling board member or mean old guy.
You’d think this guy starred in like 11 Elf movies and a Disney+ limited series called Buddy: Elfness Rising or something. It’s ONE movie he was in forever ago.
Buddy: Elfness Rising
And he turned down a TON of money for Elf 2.I think it was $29 million.
Smart move too. Never do a Christmas sequel, or you’ll end up like Tim Allen. Lol
They act like it was his seminal role. Farrel will Forever be Burgundy first and Buddy twelfth.
“We’re not the first to notice the parallels between Barbie and The Lego Movie.”No truer word spoken
He’s gunning for the inevitable Trump bio. films.
Some people say Will Ferrell plays good guys. What this article supposes is: what if he played bad guys in two movies??? Has anyone noticed this???Quality journalism, thank you
yeah, points for trying but this is a real nothingburger.
Meh, I also made the connection between the Lego Movie villain he played and the boardroom member during Barbie as well. Not the worst article idea.
The place is becoming a nothingburger joint.
true! https://alkaroof.com/
Hey, AI worked hard generating this article.
“When did Will Ferrell become the heavy?”[cites two movies made seven years apart]
yes, two movies made 9 years apart are definitely a notable trend worth writing thinkpieces about.
I’m just glad he’s finally the age he’s always resembled.
BARBIE SPOILERS
He explicitly wants to fix Barbieland in the same way that Barbie does, despite Kendom being just as lucrative, so not sure he’s The Heavy…?
No Ashley? I feel a deep sadness down in my plums
“Will Ferrell plays the heavy as a villainous stuffed shirt”.I think “villainous” is going too far regarding his role in ‘Barbie’. He’s antagonistic to Barbie’s goals in the story, but not out of malice; he genuinely wants Barbieland and the real world to coexist harmoniously, but he just can’t figure out a better way than sticking our hero in a box. Once he’s shown a different path towards the end of the film, he goes along with it happily. He’s an oaf, but not a bad guy.
Yeah, I thought his point was that he wasn’t truly a villain he was just an unwitting agent of the patriarchy. He was the one who still fought to try to save Barbieland after Kendom was making money but he was so up his own butt his solutions weren’t good. He understood Barbieland and its magic but was also afraid of it (which I get, what a weird job that would be to both have to make a profit, sell good quality products, etc and also be somehow morally and legally responsible for an entire magical dimension). He tried to look out for his employees and listened but added weird steps and politics like every other manager. Ken was really more of the villain than Will Ferrell though Will Ferrell also abetted Ken but just ignoring his existence. Very much like The Lego Movie
GET OFF THE SHED!
He started spending a lot of time in Sweden and adopted our style.
How Zoolander was missed is baffling. Oh wait, this is the AVC – nevermind.
I just saw the greatest instagram reel this morning. I don’t know how to link it here but it was “Deangelo’s invisible ball juggling routine” from The Office with CGI balls added in.
It’s amazing and exactly what the internet is for.
Just watched the clip and it’s quite good.
Reading this I don’t get it, wouldn’t that just remove the joke? But I will go watch
I got to think there’s a scene of Will Ferrel’s character getting some kind of comeuppance or consequences for being a jerk that got cut by Mattel who didn’t want their fictional CEO seen in too negative a light.
I just watched episode 2 of Twisted Metal. Anthony Mackie has a lot of young Will Smith energy here… tbh I’m a bit worried about Captain America 4 although a super hick guy was like “Captain America is in 8 Mile!” recently so that gave me hope.