Will & Harper
(USA, 114 min.)
Dir. Josh Greenbaum
Programme: TIFF Galas (Canadian premiere)
A funny, heart-warming documentary with a stealth political punch, Will & Harper stars comic actor Will Ferrell on a road trip with former Saturday Night Live writer, Harper Steele, who announced her transition at age 61. Together, they take a 16-day road trip in a vintage wood-panelled Grand Wagoneer across the United States to process their evolving relationship through heartland America from New York to Los Angeles.
As the pair visit dive bars, sit courtside at an NBA basketball game, and interact with fans at dirt track car race, the famous comedian and the not-quite-passing middle-aged trans woman take the measure of American’s levels of tolerance and paranoia at a time when Republican politicians are fomenting anti-trans panic and legislating against gender affirming health care.
After a critically acclaimed debut at Sundance in January 2024, Will & Harper had its international launch at Toronto International Film Festival before its debut on Netflix on September 27 in the final weeks before the U.S. election campaign.
With an off-camera film crew guided by director Josh Greenbaum (Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar), Will & Harper is shot in a multi-camera style that is more like a staged celebrity reality television series than a behind the scenes cinéma vérité documentary. This is showbiz, after all, as signalled by an early scene where Will and Harper visit SNL producer Lorne Michaels at his headquarters at 30 Rock, and then meet up with a gang of SNL alumnae, including Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, and Seth Meyers before they take the plunge into red state America. Later cameos by Molly Shannon, Will Forte, and Kristen Wiig add a few more dashes of celebrity spice.
However, once the pair hit the road, things start to get real. With Harper’s encouragement, Ferrell assumes the role of naïve but well-meaning ally, reading from Harper’s typed out journals about her darkest moments, and accompanying her on visits with her children in New York and sister in Iowa. As they take turns behind the wheel, Ferrell interrogates her: How did Harper choose her name (after To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee), whether she’s thinking of bottom surgery (maybe), how it feels to have boobs (great), and what kind of partner she is seeking (one who likes to lie in bed in the morning discussing the “shitty movie” they saw the night before).
Because Harper is also a comic writer, she can be acerbically funny too, but the friends’ social status is clearly not equal. The title echoes the pioneering nineties’ gay sitcom Will & Grace but it also establishes the priority of Will, also a producer on the film. The boisterous comic actor, who comes across as shyly soft-spoken in person, handles awkward or fawning fan encounters with a practiced, friendly manner. In contrast, Harper’s encounters with staring strangers are sometimes full of tense uncertainty.
The gulf is painfully revealed after one of Ferrell’s Borat-style stunts backfires. At a Texas steakhouse, with the management’s participation, Ferrell decides to don a Sherlock Holmes outfit and, in character, attempts to eat a 72-ounce steak while an audience gawks, and Harper sits miserably across from the star. The restaurant clients whip out their phone cameras to record them and post images on social media, which are quickly tagged with hateful comments. On the next morning’s car ride, Ferrell is brought to tears at the way his joke backfired, and in subsequent scenes, we see how he adjusts and listens to his friend.
Whether Will & Harper will change hearts and minds in the current election cycle is unknowable. The film could be plausibly criticized as more Hollywood liberal virtue signalling, or for its sitcom-like package of laughs, hugs and lessons. But beyond the immediate fraught moment, there’s a sophisticated simplicity to Will & Harper’s light but serious exploration of the spectrum of ways we see and judge each other, as performers, as audiences, as threats, friends and loved ones.
Will & Harper screened at TIFF 2024 and streams on Netflix beginning Sept. 27.
Get more coverage from this year’s festival here.
