Good movie, but I can see why people have issues with it.
This is not a Hollywood comedy. It's not what audiences are going to expect when they see a movie stars Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It's not a laugh-a-minute movie.
This movie is about a couple in crisis, a crisis that starts when the Ferrell character acts like a coward when the ski resort the family is staying at is threatened by an avalanche. His character flees his family and runs for safety.
The main part of the movie deals with the afterath. It's not a funny premise.
About 15 years ago, Ricky Gervais started doing a show called "The Office". Gervais found humor by exploring painful and embarrassing humor. It's not easy humor to grasp: it's not escapist humor, it's the kind of humor found by laughing at the human condition. It's not what Americans expect, esp. in a Will Ferrell movie.
"Downhill" is an exercise in cringe humor. A view who goes in expecting that can appreciate the movie for what it's doing. And points need to go to Ferrell for playing such an awful, confused man. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus is terrific in the lead role.
Having seen this movie, I now want to see Force Majeure, the Swedish movie it was based on. I would not be surprised to discover it's a much stronger movie. It is difficult to translate European comedies to Hollywood: Americans demand our comedies by light and fluffy. Feels like "Downhill" was a compromise, much as "Cousins" was a watered down version of "Cousin, Cousine", and "The Bird Cage" was a watered down version of "La Cage aux Folles".
What really irritates me here is that, once again, the studio marketers badly misrepresented the nature of a movie just to sell tickets. Had the studio been honest about what the movie was trying to do, we would not be seeing so many 1-star reviews from people who had the wrong expectations about what this movie was.
This is not a Hollywood comedy. It's not what audiences are going to expect when they see a movie stars Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It's not a laugh-a-minute movie.
This movie is about a couple in crisis, a crisis that starts when the Ferrell character acts like a coward when the ski resort the family is staying at is threatened by an avalanche. His character flees his family and runs for safety.
The main part of the movie deals with the afterath. It's not a funny premise.
About 15 years ago, Ricky Gervais started doing a show called "The Office". Gervais found humor by exploring painful and embarrassing humor. It's not easy humor to grasp: it's not escapist humor, it's the kind of humor found by laughing at the human condition. It's not what Americans expect, esp. in a Will Ferrell movie.
"Downhill" is an exercise in cringe humor. A view who goes in expecting that can appreciate the movie for what it's doing. And points need to go to Ferrell for playing such an awful, confused man. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus is terrific in the lead role.
Having seen this movie, I now want to see Force Majeure, the Swedish movie it was based on. I would not be surprised to discover it's a much stronger movie. It is difficult to translate European comedies to Hollywood: Americans demand our comedies by light and fluffy. Feels like "Downhill" was a compromise, much as "Cousins" was a watered down version of "Cousin, Cousine", and "The Bird Cage" was a watered down version of "La Cage aux Folles".
What really irritates me here is that, once again, the studio marketers badly misrepresented the nature of a movie just to sell tickets. Had the studio been honest about what the movie was trying to do, we would not be seeing so many 1-star reviews from people who had the wrong expectations about what this movie was.