Not a month and a half ago, living legend Keith David received his justly deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the 2,847th awarded in the landmark’s six decades. Fast forward to now, and he’s playing a caddy’s corpse in “The Hawk,” the new venture between Will Ferrell and Netflix. Given the week that’s been, he could be in the news for grimmer reasons, not the least because “The Hawk” happens to be pretty damn good. A little David is better than none, isn’t it?
“The Hawk” does indeed have very little David, who appears in the the show’s self-titled first episode as Old Henry, attendant to Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins (Ferrell), in every way a prototypical Farrell lout: he’s a has-been pro golfer determined to escape the Korn Ferry circuit and make his way back onto the PGA Tour, and a dimwitted loudmouthed whose reckless disregard for literally every single person he bumps into is matched only by his misplaced egotism. Lonnie thinks he’s the Lord’s gift to golf, and for that matter, to everyone and everything else under the sun. Henry is more or less the last person left who’ll put up with him. So when the pair arrive late to an event, Henry having floored it on their tour bus and barreled through red lights, parking lots, and shrubbery, the effect is off-putting and beguiling at the same time. What an asshole, that Lonnie, but what an entertainer.
Henry keels over on the course not long after making Lonnie’s tee time, and that’s where “The Hawk” picks up a comeback-cum-redemption arc, in which Lonnie tries not only to make good on his ambitions and dormant talent–the show firmly establishes that if he’s washed up in its present tense, he was one of golf’s greats in his day–but to patch things up with his son Lance (Jimmy Tatro), and Stacy (Molly Shannon), his ex-wife-to-be, as soon as he files the paperwork. (He won’t file the paperwork.) He finds himself a new caddy along the way, too: Sam (Fortune Feimster), a perfect match for his disheveled slacker energy, even considering, or perhaps because of, her complete ignorance of how golf works.
We’ve seen this kind of exercise from Farrell before, in movies like “Semi-Pro” and Christopher Nolan’s personal favorite, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” (Listening to a man who came out of the womb with a scarf around his neck and a tea thermos in his pocket drawl “if ain’t first, you’re last” is one of life’s greatest pleasures.) But neither of these had a director like David Gordon Green steering the wheel, or better put, gripping the club; nor did they have Harper Steele molding the narrative as both one of its authors and one of its producers. Maybe, given that this is television, the intermittent effect folks like her and Green have on the overall product is felt less than it would be in a movie. Then again, there’s undeniably something here that a lot of Ferrell’s 2010s filmography lacks. Let’s call it “soul.”
Is Lonnie markedly different from Ricky Bobby, Chazz Michael Michaels, and Jackie Moon? No. He’s a loser in winner’s clothes. But twenty years separate “ The Hawk” from “Talladega Nights,” “Semi-Pro,” and “Blades of Glory,” and along with them, whatever passes as wisdom and maturity in Ferrell’s personal calculus; no one would ever be fool enough to call him either wise or mature, but even a clown grows up in their own way as they gain in years. “The Hawk” reflects that, not so much in its humor as its atmosphere: it’s a melancholic piece of work right down in its bones. It seems fair to take the mood as an indication of where Ferrell is in his life and career, and maybe along with that, where Steele is post-transition. After the road trip they took together in Josh Greenbaum’s wonderful 2024 doc “Will & Harper” (also streaming on Netflix), how could anybody, how could they, expect their comic dynamic to stay the same? Their relationship to each other, and to comedy, has changed, clear as day in “The Hawk’s” writing.
But “different” isn’t “bad,” of course, or even “lesser.” It’s just different. As much as “The Hawk” plays closely to Ferrell’s long-established sensibilities as a funnyman and actor, the jokes often land with a kind of dejected impact; Lonnie’s best days are behind him, though because the series is about a nascent sports comeback, one can assume that good ones remain ahead of him. More so than other Ferrell characters, he knows it, too, or he seems to know it. Self-awareness simmers throughout “The Hawk,” even in its broadest, bawdiest moments, whether Lonnie’s knack for poorly timed arousal–no show in recent memory has wrung as many laughs out of the word “boner” as this–or Stacy reacting to his bullshit like a parent discovering that their child has dumped out an ant farm in the kitchen. Shannon, frankly, is the combustible engine that makes “The Hawk” tick as a comedy, constantly meeting Ferrell several levels above where he usually hangs out; meanwhile, Feimster is his match, a superb pairing for his blissfully ignorant slobhood.
Against expectation, Ferrell is doing lighter comedic legwork here. His role is to further the series’ existential gloom. Getting older sucks, especially when “getting older” means watching your child succeed in your field; you’re supposed to want to cheer them on, not fret that they’re replacing you. (Tatro, while charming on his own, is the cast’s odd man out, never quite reading as the flesh and blood to Shannon and Ferrell’s combination of bile and boorishness.) Aging also means facing mortality, wrapped up in Henry’s abrupt passing in the premiere. But “The Hawk,” ultimately, a comedy, and in its design, aging also means unintentionally pitching a plaid tent outside of a funeral home. If there’s any leading man in comedy today who can make a dick joke sing while selling his character’s sad-sack spirit at the same, it is, and will be from today until his last, Ferrell. [B]
Boston-based pop culture critic who has been writing about film and television online since 2009, with bylines at Paste Magazine, Slant, The Hollywood Reporter, Polygon, and The Playlist. A member of the Online Film Critics Society and the Boston Online Film Critics Association.
