{"id":1092371,"date":"2026-07-16T07:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1092371\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:30:17","slug":"the-hawk-review-will-ferrells-comedy-tees-up-his-usual-silly-jokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1092371\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Hawk’ review: Will Ferrell’s comedy tees up his usual silly jokes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe Hawk,\u201d a 10-episode series premiering Thursday on Netflix, is a golf comedy, a Will Ferrell comedy and, most to the point, a Will Ferrell golf comedy, following in the line of such sports-themed Ferrell films as \u201cBlades of Glory,\u201d<\/a> \u201cTalladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby\u201d<\/a> and \u201cSemi-Pro,\u201d<\/a> and, at a stretch, \u201cEurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.\u201d<\/a> It has the advantage of concerning a sport the actor loves and plays, making it feel affectionate and informed, even as it creates its own silly world.<\/p>\n

Ferrell plays Lonnie \u201cThe Hawk\u201d Hawkins, whose career cratered in 2010 after he choked on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, missing a three-foot putt \u201con the verge of a career Grand Slam.\u201d Now, as his son Lance (Jimmy Tatro) is making a name for himself on the PGA circuit, Lonnie is working on the minor league Korn Ferry Tour, putting on a show with his longtime caddy and friend, Old Henry, played by Keith David, whose departure from the series after only eight minutes is a disappointment to me, as a card-carrying David fan, whenever I get around to printing those cards.<\/p>\n

But it clears the way for Fortune Feimster\u2019s<\/a> Sam, who just happens to be fixing her car in a Walmart parking lot where Lonnie has parked his tour bus, to become Lonnie\u2019s caddy. She knows nothing about golf, and can\u2019t catch a golf club on the fly \u2014 one of Old Henry\u2019s tricks \u2014 but she has the proper sense of fun and some good ideas.<\/p>\n

Lonnie\u2019s dream is to get back on the PGA tour and claim that elusive grand slam. (\u201cYou are a ball. I am a man,\u201d he says to a golf ball he\u2019s about to tee up. \u201cClassic redemption story.\u201d) It\u2019s no spoiler to say he\u2019ll make it back to the PGA, because there\u2019s no show without it. Besides Lance, his rival there is the player he lost to in 2010, Golden Fisk, played by Luke Wilson, whose brother Owen starred in last year\u2019s golf comedy, \u201cStick.\u201d<\/a> (Ferrell sometimes sounds like Owen here, oddly.)<\/p>\n

Lance is engaged to Natalie (Katelyn Tarver), an aspiring wellness influencer, who polices his eating and drinking and conducts him in his \u201cmanifestations,\u201d but happily they don\u2019t play her as too much of a caricature. If this were a romantic comedy, she\u2019d be the expendable Ralph Bellamy character, but all Lance really cares about is golf \u2014 unlike Lonnie, who mostly cares about golf, but spends the whole series trying to get closer to his son. He\u2019s excited about the chance of their playing together. \u201cWe both can be great,\u201d says Lonnie, comparing them to LeBron and Bronny James<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re not on the same team,\u201d Lance, less excited, points out.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

David Hornsby as Radford and Molly Shannon as Stacy, Lonnie\u2019s not quite ex-wife.<\/p>\n

(Colleen E. Hayes \/ Netflix)<\/p>\n

Molly Shannon, Ferrell\u2019s old \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d castmate and \u201cSuperstar\u201d<\/a> co-star, plays Stacy, Lance\u2019s overly doting mother and Lonnie\u2019s not quite ex-wife. (He\u2019s dragging his feet on the divorce; he\u2019s still into her.) She\u2019s looking for a company to distribute an alcoholic ice tea she calls Teed Off and is in a vaguely defined relationship with \u201ctraveling companion\u201d Radford (David Hornsby), a genial, gentlemanly sort often seen reading a book (Andr\u00e9 Gide\u2019s \u201cThe Immoralist,\u201d E.M. Forster\u2019s \u201cMaurice\u201d) meant to suggest he\u2019s gay. (Not every viewer pays attention to book covers, but you\u2019ll get the idea, anyway.) As with Natalie, or Golden, despite the name, he isn\u2019t the caricature another series might make him. In fact, apart from Chris Parnell\u2019s snobby board member, Anton, who hates Lonnie and his fans, whom he describes as \u201clow-class, T-shirt wearing, beer-drinking idiots in their cut-off jeans and flip flops,\u201d most every character is exhibits at least a suggestion of human decency.<\/p>\n

A big galoot (though with good golf form), Ferrell again plays a sort of overgrown child. (\u201cElf\u201d<\/a> is his defining role). He executes some inspired business with a hand stuck in a pickle jar, and then mangled in a car door, a wound he dresses himself with Paw Patrol band-aids, electrical tape and newspaper. Lonnie\u2019s narcissism is so jolly and inclusive \u2014 he assumes he\u2019s a party everyone wants to attend \u2014 that it reads like a kind of innocence. (A scene in which he gives money to a poor family seems to exist only to demonstrate his generosity.) <\/p>\n

Shannon, who is given a bounty of graphic dialogue detailing the violence she\u2019ll wreak if someone does or does not do something, is a hurricane. And Feimster, whose journey this is as much as anyone\u2019s, gets a part with lots of shades to play; she and Ferrell are the heart of the show; the health of their relationship matters more than who wins a golf game \u2014 a theme, certainly, of many a sports story.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t perfect. There are occasional problems with the mechanics of the plot; threads that trail off into nothing after coming from nowhere. Some scenes seem to contradict what we we\u2019ve seen before, especially when it comes to Lance, who has a gambling problem that comes and goes depending on what the writers need him to do. Not everything aligns perfectly, and I found the climax wanting, even off-putting in some respects. Unlike an actual sporting event, of course, the outcome is engineered, which doesn\u2019t make the golf scenes less suspenseful or exciting for the viewer.<\/p>\n

Created by Ferrell with Harper Steele (who wrote at \u201cSNL\u201d when Ferrell acted there and is his co-star in the 2024 documentary \u201cWill & Harper\u201d<\/a>) and frequent Ferrell collaborator Chris Henchy, \u201cThe Hawk\u201d is sentimental and juvenile \u2014 that isn\u2019t a criticism \u2014 its pee and poo and erection jokes delivered with great vigor. There are, of course, the sort of improvised passages that have left their mark on a quarter-century of film comedy, so that now and again a scene spins into irrelevance, as if life were just a series of skits \u2014 and maybe it is \u2014 but this does tend to be funny and what we come for, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Hawk,\u201d a 10-episode series premiering Thursday on Netflix, is a golf comedy, a Will Ferrell comedy and,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1092372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[298156,298161,77,298153,77231,298157,298155,298160,260736,298159,298152,3943,298162,298158,133962,17947,298154,16,15],"class_list":["post-1092371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-10-episode-series","tag-co-star","tag-entertainment","tag-ferrell","tag-fortune-feimster","tag-gentlemanly-sort","tag-golf-comedy","tag-good-idea","tag-hawk","tag-longtime-caddy","tag-lonnie","tag-movies","tag-natalie","tag-old-henry","tag-scene","tag-show","tag-son-lance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116928489021410263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1092372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}