Downhill (2020) Review

 rating: ****

the story: A marriage hits a rough patch on a ski vacation.

review: Based on the Swedish film Force Majeure, Downhill is the third film directed by the duo of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (The Descendants, The Way, Way Back). I haven’t seen Force Majeure. I have no earthly clue why it would be remotely relevant to worry about this when talking about Downhill.

Downhill is exactly like Faxon and Rash’s prior films. It’s a movie about awkward family moments that are both heavy and presented in as light a fashion as possible. There’s unpleasantness, and it might be uncomfortable to watch at times, but this is a legitimate way to make a movie, and is perhaps all the better for it.

George Clooney was the hook in Descendants, coming off arguably the best period of his career (Michael Clayton, Up in the Air). You care about his widower problems because of his inherent charm. You can put up with Steve Carell’s nastiness in The Way, Way Back because you also have Sam Rockwell at his most charming.

And you can cope with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who in Downhill is having the hardest time with a near-catastrophic event, because as counterpoint you have Will Ferrell. Before knowing anything about Downhill I really had no interest in it. I love Will Ferrell, but sometimes it just seems like his films are a Rolodex of every possible context for the same basic elements. Sometimes they work really well, and sometimes they don’t. I thought Downhill was just Will Ferrell in a skiing movie. But it’s actually one of his increasingly rare dramatic roles, insofar as he’s ever overly dramatic in his dramatic movies (which has actually made him refreshing as a comedian who sometimes does drama).

The only problem here is that Louis-Dreyfus comes off as a shrew because Ferrell feels more sympathetic. But that only emphasizes how awkward the whole situation is. If it were a matter of picking sides it would be more difficult. In the original movie the onus is more of the husband’s side, how he apparently obviously abandoned his family in the emergency. But so much emphasis is already on Ferrell before the (quasi)avalanche, and even how the ski resort doesn’t take the event seriously (the best scene of the movie), that it makes it that much harder to side with Louis-Dreyfus as she increasingly freaks out about it. And while Ferrell is not at all averse to showing his comedic instincts, Louis-Dreyfus is, making her even harder to root for.

But as much as I find myself siding with Ferrell, Louis-Dreyfus ends up giving him a generous opportunity to redeem himself, and then at the very last minute (this is how I currently interpret it) there’s a second moment of potential disaster, and it’s Louis-Dreyfus who pulls away....And cut straight to credits!

Even viewed as a Will Ferrell movie alone, Downhill is rewarding enough, but Faxon and Rash once again prove they have a winning formula, however unlikely it seems to be. Miranda Otto shows up in an equally unlikely supporting role, thereby somewhat proving that this is exactly how the movie is supposed to be received.