Man, have there been a lot of golf movies and TV shows released in the past few years, especially since the pandemic boom of golfers brought on a whole new level of interest into our game.
Some of them have been great. Did you see Phantom of the Open? Very solid movie.
Some of them have been good. Have you watched the Apple TV show Stick? It’s additive.
Some of them are unwatchable. Have you seen The Hawk? I wouldn’t recommend it.
The Hawk can’t hold a candle to great golf comedies
This review won’t last very long because I only got through 15 minutes of this show before turning it off (for the record, I eventually skimmed some other episodes and watched enough clips to get the gist).
To rewind, The Hawk is the Will Ferrell-led show that debuted this month on Netflix. Ferrell plays Lonnie Hawkins, a three-time major winner who is languishing on the Korn Ferry Tour and attempting to recapture his glory days. His son, Lance Hawkins (Jimmy Tatro), is an up-and-coming tour star. Molly Shannon plays Stacy, Lonnie’s ex-wife.
This just isn’t for me. Given the Rotten Tomatoes score south of 30 percent, I’m guessing it’s not for a lot of people.
It’s Temu Happy Gilmore three decades after that movie came out. Hawkins is another golf outcast character in the supposedly staid world of professional golf—but unlike the Happy Gilmore character, Hawkins has virtually no redeeming qualities.
Ferrell plays the exact kind of character you would expect him to play. If you’ve seen Old School or Step Brothers, you know what you are watching, although I’ll warn you that Ferrell has lost his fastball and is far more grating than endearing.
The first scene is Hawkins frantically rushing to the first tee as his caddie recklessly drives their RV through oncoming traffic and security checkpoints. A few minutes later, there is a montage of him dancing in a thong as other players are attempting to putt.
That I made it past that scene is a testament to the human spirit.
Near the end of the round, his longtime caddie falls down and dies in a bunker on the 18th hole before Ferrell can putt out. Hawkins argues with a rules official that he should still get to finish his round rather than being forced to withdraw.
Yikes.
Ferrell is loud for the sake of being loud—the kind of performance a millennial found hilarious in 2005—and does anything possible to get the cheapest laughs which might work better if his character wasn’t an asshole.
The promo for the show featured Ferrell showing up in character at a variety of events and each hit was impossibly cringey and secondhand embarrassment-inducing. That was a sign of things to come.
Here is the problem: The Hawk introduces nothing new into the golf entertainment space. Happy Gilmore perfected the outsider making a mockery of golf. Tin Cup captured the redemption arc of a former pro making a comeback. Hell, Stick is based on a washed-up tour pro trying to vicariously relive his glory days by coaching a prodigy.
It’s like The Hawk smashed every golf trope together and thought it would work.
Sadly, this appears like a shameless cash grab. Ferrell himself admitted to choosing the golf theme because he wanted to shoot exclusively in Los Angeles without any travel.
I should clarify that I have no vendetta against Ferrell. I loved him when I was a teenager. He has a schtick and sometimes it hits depending on how that is balanced with other actors.
This one does not hit and I’m afraid Ferrell’s best acting days were back when I was trying to get my driver’s license (I now have gray hair and go to Costco to get bulk orders of Huggies).
I give it 1.5 out of 5 Pro V1s.
john
1 month ago
It was better than I thought it would be. Happy Gilmore 2 was fairly disappointed besides the cameos and the Scheffler bits. I wouldn’t say it was great, but it was fun and I liked how his character arc progressed with his son. I liked it better than Stick as that was just more predictable and corny.