It’s all Downhill from the start
Downhill (M, 86 mins) Directed by Nat Faxon, Jim Rash Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★
In 2014 or 2015, when hope still sprung eternal and the bluebird of happiness had not yet been shot from the sky by the arrows of cynicism and despair, a rather terrific little Swedish black comedy made its way through the smaller cinemas of the bigger cities of these fair isles we call home, down here at the last bus stop on Earth.
The film was called Force Majeure. It told the story of a moderately- to filthy-rich young family who had taken themselves to an exclusive French ski resort.
Mum and Dad were bickering, but not in a terminal fashion, until a small avalanche threatened to swamp the patio upon which the family were dining.
Dad, without so much as a look back, cut and ran, pausing only to grab his cellphone from the table as he sprinted to safety, alone. The mother meanwhile, threw herself between her children and the approaching snow, emerging a few moments later, shaken and powdercoated, but safe with her cubs.
What followed was an excoriating and occasionally scabrous dissection of a marriage on the rocks, the fragility of the male ego and of how we will never know if we are made of the stuff of heroes, until the fates decide to test us.
Force Majeure is widely acclaimed as a tremendously funny, insightful and provocative film. I flat out loved it, and I urge you to seek it out at any surviving video store in your own corner of paradise.
What you should not do, under any circumstances at all, is pay money to see the lame, misshapen, misguided and almost heroically unfunny ‘‘comedy’’ which is Downhill, the dreaded ‘‘American remake’’ of Force Majeure.
Whenever a truly lousy English language knock-off of a great non-English movie appears, the comments section routinely fills up with good people opining that ‘‘remakes are always rubbish’’, which is not a sentiment I always agree with.
I think that David Fincher’s take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a far better film than the muddled original. And I’ll even defend Let Me In, an American redo of the brilliant, Swedish, Let the Right One In.
But, in the case of Downhill, the comments section can have at it.
This film simply doesn’t work. If you’re familiar with the original, you’ll be dismayed at how sentimental, impotent and blunt the attempts at commentary are.
And if you’re just spending your hard-earned in the hopes of seeing the Will Ferrell comedy the trailer is rather desperately trying to pretend Downhill is, then you’ll be feeling quite royally screwed as the last of this film’s thankfully few minutes limps off the screen.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus could read me the phone book and I would die a happy man, but here, imprisoned in a script that gives her only a few moments to shine – one, admittedly, that works so well it belongs in a completely different movie – she comes across as bored and dismayed by the entire project.
The only glimmers of pleasure come from Miranda Otto, dementedly camping it up as the hotel’s romantically-voracious entertainment director.
Ferrell meanwhile, just flounders and dies in this role. With, perhaps, Steve Carell in the lead, Downhill might have flown. Carell worked wonders in directors’ Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s The Way, Way Back. But Ferrell will not join the small pantheon of comedic leading men who can also regularly turn in a great serious lead performance when asked. Not judging by his work here, anyway.
Listen, if you walk into Downhill expecting a comedy, you’ll be disappointed. And if you’re hoping for a worthy remake of a great original, you’ll be appalled.
Seldom has a movie been more presciently named.