This is the best Will Ferrell movie, according to science.
Doug Norrie
What are Will Ferrell’s best movies? It seems like Will Ferrell has been around forever, and in many ways he’s been playing many of the same characters since he burst onto the scene in the early 2000s. That’s fine with me because I could basically see him reading the phone book and smiling.
Fans spend a lot of time debating which Will Ferrell movie is the best, but we used math to come up with a definitive ranking. To be on this list, a Will Ferrell film must complete at least 50% of the critical consensus, Ferrell must have the same or close role as the lead in the film, and it does not include voice work.
By our count, these are Will Ferrell’s best movies.
1. elf | 2003
It’s Will Ferrell’s highest-rated film and perhaps his most universally loved. elf It has turned into a holiday staple for my family and many others. It’s the story of Buddy, a displaced “elf” who gets lost in New York with interesting results. Elf is a great movie full of laugh-out-loud moments and a touching story.
Frankly, it baffles me that the Tomatometer readings are this “low” and that the negative reviewers didn’t throw out the cliché about lumps of coal in their inventory (I did anyway). Those who say no are simply mistaken.
2. other people | 2010
other people It opens with a hilarious scene featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Samuel Jackson as don’t-give-af@#$ cops who take down bad guys, blow things up, and trip up girls. Their deaths just before the opening credits end.
Step by step, Ferrell emerges as a bean-counting, rule-following cop and Mark Wahlberg’s brash partner. other people There are great one-liners, a great dynamic between the two leads, a Michael Keaton TLC reference, and tons of laughs. It could have easily been a stupid, stupid mess, but they pulled it off. I’ll never get tired of the gags in movies featuring Eva Mendes as Will Ferrell’s wife.
3. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues | 2013
A rare sequel that surpasses its predecessor in the eyes of critics. anchorman 2 Get the gang back together for another journey through the amazing world of “News.” This Will Ferrell movie sequel doesn’t deviate too much from the formula that worked the first time around, and in this case, critics seem to have known what they were getting early on.
The team has never been funnier, the jokes are over the top, and the world of 24-hour news has never been more filled with debauchery.
4. everything must go | 2010
If you think about it from a technical level, everything must go Although it’s a comedy, it’s really more of a story about loss and redemption. From a character standpoint, Ferrell doesn’t stray too far from what he’s done in the past, but this one has enough sourness to work well with the sweetness.
He plays a struggling alcoholic salesman whose wife abandons him, literally throwing everything out on the front lawn. As a result, Ferrell drinks himself into oblivion by living on the lawn and befriends a neighborhood boy who is going through his own shit among the things he once cherished. It’s a touching story and one of Will Ferrell’s more dramatic turns in film.
5. Stranger than a novel | 2006
Promoted as a comedy, this Will Ferrell movie is actually a super meta story about a man living the life of the character the author is writing the story about. Except that they both live in the same reality. all right? It plays out smoothly enough on screen, but creating such an intertwined and overlapping story without running into too many temporal and spatial issues was almost an achievement in itself.
As the lovable loser, Ferrell stays very true to his role as he “explores” the world laid out on paper in front of others. Do you see what I mean? I’m confused.
6. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby | 2006
Did this Will Ferrell movie do more for auto racing than the actual history of the sport, or did it set NASCAR back 10 years? It’s kind of hard to say.
Ferrell and running mate John C. Reilly show it all in a film that’s as off-track as it is laugh-out-loud funny. In many ways, this typifies the almost comical nature of Ferrell’s career. It’s full of shameless advertising, borderline offensive takes on race car culture, engaging people, and some very stupid jokes. It still works. The scene where Ricky Bobby says grace is worth the price of admission in itself.
7. blade of glory | 2007
You’ll notice that Will Ferrell movies love to take concepts.In this case, playing sports and making films about subcultures. Shit, we don’t even think about going there semi pro (22%), But these kinds of movies are one of the hallmarks of Ferrell’s career.
in blade of gloryHe plays Chaz Michaels, who desperately wants to get back into figure skating after being banned from wearing skates for life. So he teams up with Jon Heder, who has just joined the company. Napoleon DynamiteAnd they put on a skating show that was very consistent with what these two guys look like on the ice.
8. campaign | 2012
Ferrell has a lot of political satire under his belt.He played a heel version of George W. Bush until the 2000s. saturday night live And in his own solo play, You’re welcome, America.. As far as satirical presidential runs go, it may be the most symbolic..
Here, he and Zach Galifianakis are running as rival candidates, and Ferrell is basically doing a “W” impersonation under another name: U.S. Representative. In an ever-escalating series of campaign stunts, the two face off in yet another Ferrell mockery, this time of the electoral process and the core political system.
If the way Will Ferrell’s films depict these institutions feels too close to home, that’s because he has a flair for the ridiculous and the sublime. campaign This may be the best example of that strategy.
9. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy | 2004
in Anchorman, Will Ferrell It takes us into a glass case of his feelings about this cult and box office hit from the halcyon days of the San Diego nightly news. When all is said and done, Ron Burgundy may go down as Ferrell’s most memorable character, and that’s really saying a lot considering the list above.
He delivers an epic performance as the feminine, mahogany-loving, jazz flute-playing leader of the nightly news team. anchorman There was so much, so much (Brick killed someone!) that I almost lost touch with reality. In a good way.
10. stepbrother | 2008
Ferrell and John C. Reilly have teamed up in three widely released films, but they certainly seem to be much more than that. Maybe it’s because they’re tour de force of abject stupidity that every time they play, it seems like we’ve seen them thousands of times.
Here, they are just as ‘close’ as the middle-aged man-boy who became half-brothers. Despite living in the bodies of full-grown adults, they are the grumpy kids you’d expect.
Ferrell will be Honorable Mentions.
I didn’t add these three Will Ferrell movies to my main list. Because he technically didn’t star in any of those movies. But he definitely steals every scene in all three movies. Whether it’s Frank the Tank’s streak, Mugatu’s plan to dominate the fashion world, or Chazz Reinhold yelling at his mom to cook him meatloaf, Ferrell seems to be emerging as a star in all three.
old school
zoolander
wedding crashers
