Some comedians burn brightly then fade away. Surfing a hit TV series or breakout supporting role to a movie lead, sometimes even a hit one, they can become overexposed, or have too many flops, and find themselves returning to relative obscurity or more modest creative pursuits. Will Ferrell is not one of those people.
2015 marks twenty years since he first appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” on which he quickly became one of the most valuable players. Twelve years since he became a fully-flung movie star with “Old School” and “Elf,” and Ferrell still remains one of the most in-demand comic names around.
Sure, there have been misfires and flops along the way (this week’s “Get Hard” being one of them, at least according to our review), but his success rate has remained higher than most. Even in his worst films, or in his briefest appearances in other people’s films, Ferrell normally finds a way to make you laugh, surprise you, or weird you out, and that’s why he’s still at the top of the tree.
With “Get Hard” hitting theaters, we decided it was time to look back over Ferrell’s career to date, and we’ve ranked every one of Ferrell’s characters since he broke out into movies, from worst to best. We’re sticking solely to movies, so don’t go looking for More Cowbell or his “Eastbound & Down” TV role. That said, there’s plenty here, and plenty of super pointless arguments to be had about the relative merits of a great two-minute cameo in a terrible film vs a so-so lead in a better one.
If you’ve just got a few minutes, take a scoot through the rankings then take to the comments to express your vehement disagreement. And if you’ve a bit more time than that, sit back and hit play on all these videos for one of the chuckliest afternoons you’ll have had in a while, because even in the lower reaches of this list, there’s plenty of distinctly Ferrell-esque fun to be had.
38. Michael, Brian’s Boyfriend — “Boat Trip” (2002)
A deeply lousy movie that saw the ill-matched pair of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Horatio Sanz as two girl-chasing bros who accidentally find themselves on a gay cruise, this features one of Ferrell’s last pre-stardom cameos, and it’s a mostly wasted one, as he serves largely as a flat plot device, and as a representation of the film’s queasy view of homosexuality.
37. Jack Wyatt/Darin — “Bewitched” (2005)
There’s almost nothing to like in Nora Ephron’s completely ill-conceived meta reboot of the classic witchcraft-themed sitcom (bar perhaps a fun cameo from Steve Carell). Ferrell is as bad as anything else here, entirely miscast as a romantic lead opposite Nicole Kidman and tipping further into the obnoxious scales than you’d like, without serving the character’s redemption especially well.
36. The Man With The Yellow Hat — “Curious George” (2006)
As he’s subsequently proved, Ferrell can be an absolute boon as a voice actor, but not so much in this cheapo 2006 traditionally-animated take on the beloved children’s storybook character. It’s admittedly aimed at very young children, but it’s still kind of a bore (compared to, say, the similarly-plotted “Paddington”), and Ferrell playing everyman as the titular monkey’s human companion is kind of a poor fit.
35. Sky Corrigan — “Superstar” (1999)
The year after Ferrell goosed one of his ‘SNL‘ characters to a movie lead in “A Night at The Roxbury,” fellow cast member Molly Shannon got hers, when her ‘SNL’ character Mary Catherine Gallagher spun off into “Superstar.” Shannon had appeared in ‘Roxbury,’ and Ferrell returned the favor twice over appearing as both Mary’s vacant lust object, jock Sky Corrigan, and also, more interestingly, as her idea of Jesus (see below). It would all be really sweet if the film didn’t suck so bad.
34. Dr. Rick Marshall — “Land Of The Lost” (2009)
Sooner or later, every comic star gets their “Pluto Nash” or “Evan Almighty” — an expensive big-budget misfire that becomes something of an albatross around their neck. For Ferrell, it was “Land Of The Lost,” which reimagines the Sid & Marty Krofft show as a VFX-packed vehicle for Ferrell as a particularly irritating scientific variant on Ron Burgundy. The blend of broad comedy and action-adventure is an uneasy one, and Ferrell grates more than usual.
33. James — “Get Hard” (2015)
Ferrell’s biggest critical misfire in a while, “Get Hard” sees him paired with Kevin Hart as a wealthy wrongly-convicted white-collar criminal who hires his mechanic to prepare him for prison life. It’s a film that delights in being offensive rather than actually funny, feeling like some kind of bizarre 80s throwback, and though Ferrell’s as proficient as ever at manufacturing laughs, it’s one of his least memorable characters amid a film that ultimately feels like an unpleasant experience.
32. Cubby The Funeral Director — “Drowning Mona” (2000)
A strange, tonally fucked dark comedy that never really finds a reason why it should have existed, “Drowning Mona” sees local cop Danny De Vito examining the death of local hate-figure Bette Midler, with various suspects among the aggressively quirky townspeople (including a hilariously bleach-blonde Casey Affleck). Ferrell has an extended cameo as a combover-sporting funeral director, but it’s only slightly less unfunny than the rest of the film.
31. Gil — “The Suburbans” (1999)
Now notable purely as an early, pre-“Alias” producing credit for J.J. Abrams,
this was a low-budget comedy that sees Ferrell as the squarest of a
bunch of middle-aged guys who reunite their one-hit-wonder band for a
pay-per-view show. Ferrell has the advantage of knowing how to act in a
way that much of the cast (including lead/writer/director Donal Lardner Ward) don’t really, but he’s still got very little to play with here.