Will & Harper Movie Review (2024)

Have you ever heard about the “Saturday Night Live” writer who came out as transgender to his friend Will Ferrell and the two went on a road trip across the United States to see how the country reacts to transgender people? Didn't you? You should, because it's pretty funny. And in the end it's no joke. It's a documentary called Will and Harper. It's on Netflix.

While I suspect the people behind the film wouldn't like that term, the film is pretty unabashedly an educational tool for a country where perhaps a third of voters not only harbor deep hostility toward transgender people, but is fed hateful rhetoric about them on a daily basis. Thanks to the chemistry of its title characters, it is touching in its unobtrusive way. And it works like the kind of buddy comedy that Ferrell would have once starred in (and for which he probably would have had to apologize later). After all, buddy comedies starring former “Saturday Night Live” cast members aren’t known for their keen sense of nuance.

Harper is Harper Steele, formerly Andrew Steele. She was on Saturday Night Live before Ferrell arrived and praised him as a talented comedian, even though no one there initially thought much of him, which became the basis for a wonderful friendship. During the pandemic, Ferrell received an email from Steele that simply said, “I'm old now and as ridiculous and unnecessary as it may seem, I'm transitioning to life as a woman.” Ferrell was taken aback because, how As he puts it: “Andrew was an Iowa-born guy with 501 jeans, shitty beer and hitchhiking, basically a lovable curmudgeon with a super-weird, creative sense of humor” – which, as the film shows us (on (a way that corrects Ferrell's perceptions without being intrusive) that it is a misperception about the type of people who make the transition.

It should be acknowledged that director Josh Greenbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”) focuses the interests more on Harper Steele than Will Ferrell. This isn't so much a movie about a straight person who identifies as cisgender and learns how to accept his old pal in a new package. It turns Ferrell into a surrogate audience member who has long ago walked the path of understanding and acceptance and is, in a sense, reenacting it in front of the cameras. Ferrell says that after receiving the email he asked himself, “How long has she felt this way?” found “uncharted territory,” but that seems to be an exaggeration for storytelling purposes. From the way these two interact on camera and a few other details, it's pretty clear that there was never even the slightest chance that Ferrell would turn Steele down or even have many problems to work out.

Steele's concerns are more pressing. In fact, it is literally a matter of life and death for them. Steele is from Iowa and says she “loves the United States, but I just don't know if they love me back now.” She presents herself to the world differently than before, but still loves the same things, including, she says , “shi-y bars” and “truck stops” and the parts of the country where a body could disappear without anyone ever finding out.

This concern becomes immediately apparent when the two talk about a road trip. The main concern is security. Not so much the safety of these two in the context of a real road movie: They're traveling with a camera crew, one of whom is Will Ferrell, and presumably the production has gotten approval and put up signs that essentially say, “We're making a movie, You give your permission to participate in this when you enter this facility,” regardless of whether the facility is the arena where the Indiana Pacers play or one of the bars mentioned above. Steele is misrepresented, and during the game there is an unfortunate encounter with the governor of Indiana, who acts friendly but turns out to be a huge anti-trans person who signed a bill denying gender-affirming care to teenagers.

No, it's more about what's already happening in the United States and around the world when the people involved aren't famous and don't constantly carry multiple cameras to collect footage for a Netflix documentary. “The hardest part of my transition was walking past all of these brothers in a social setting,” admits Steele. But in the end everything turns out quite well. And that, of course, is the point of the exercise: to show that none of this is as big of a deal as bigots make it out to be, and that there's no reason why Will Ferrell can't support his friend Harper 100 percent. The same scenario can't play out repeat everywhere.