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Downhill

A test of masculine courage or lack thereof for Will Ferrell's character, and a dramedy that fails several dramatic tests.

Downhill

Grade: C

Directors: Nat Faxon (The Way Way Back), Jim Rash

Screenplay: Faxon, Rash, Jesse Armstrong (Veep, Succession) from Ruben Ostlund original screenplay

Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said), Will Ferrell (Anchorman)

Rating: R

Runtime: 1 hr 26m

By: John DeSando

“We’re not in America, where you sue because your coffee’s hot, madam.”

Based on Ruben Ostlund’s Swedish “Force Majeure,” the American remake, Downhill, shows the same theme: Is a man a coward when leaving behind his family to flee an avalanche threatening to engulf them all. The sluggish skiing vacation turns out disastrously as Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her boys virtually shun dad (Will Farrell) for his perceived cowardice.

I hoped for an extensive debate about the uncertainty over what he did, and by extension the demands made in modern times on the male ego, where giving women newfound freedom and respect, the man may be judged by outdated standards of chivalry. Lacking the original’s Scandinavian cool, this typically American, cumbersome tale takes too little time parsing the act and too much time with cheesy process shots and slow reactions lacking insight or debate.

Dreyfus has the meatier role, doing less of her Elaine clueless but more of her sure-as hell-persona.  When she says, “I throw my arms around my children and I just wait … I wait for us to die together,” any thought that this might be a comedy is gone. Although Downhill is billed as such, no comedy is really discernible except when she struggles with an instructor. Ferrell has the thankless role of the coward who can’t defend himself because the script doesn’t allow him room to work out a defense. As is always the case with a Ferrell character, he’s bound to be humiliated and probably not know it.

Friends make lame defenses for him with the instinctive survival-reaction theory, but it isn’t even Ferrell defending himself nor is it cogent argumentation. Thank goodness for the isolating one shots of the two principals: Their interchanges are largely her declamations of his cowardice and his looking guilty.

As for the shots of the Alps, no challenge there--any screensaver can give you the same glory;for instance when the characters talk with a white mountain background, it’s mostly green screen and not very convincing.

Male courage will have to be deconstructed in a better movie. For Downhill, I will revisit the Scandinavian original to see if the theme is better relayed, or if not, if its subtlety wins the day. Meanwhile males, you’re not going to like the exposure in either film.

John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com.

John DeSando holds a BA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in English from The University of Arizona. He served several universities as a professor, dean, and academic vice president. He has been producing and broadcasting as a film critic on It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics for more than two decades. DeSando received the Los Angeles Press Club's first-place honors for national entertainment journalism.