DOWNHILL
***
Dir: Nat Faxon, Jim Rash (15, 90 mins)
If anyone has seen the brilliant Force Majeure, this remake feels rather offensive. It was a superb darkly comic Swedish drama, written and directed by Ruben Ostlünd, about a family facing up to buried issues after the husband/father puts himself first in the wake of a potential avalanche. Its subtleties and nuances don’t feel like they play well in a Will Ferrell universe, who takes the lead role, but under the indie director tutelage of The Descendants writers Faxon and Rash, this could still prove interesting. Julia Louis-Dreyfus co-stars with Ferrell as the wife forced to reassess her relationship after the incident. It’s a marital horror story grimly played out in the original Force Majeure – and hopefully this remake (for people [*ahem* idiots, Ed.] who “don’t do subtitles”) will keep some of its original ambiguities and pain. Ferrell has the capacity to make strong dramas, as Everything Must Go and Stranger Than Fiction proved, but this might prove a heavy ask. See the original, it’s very good. This inevitably won’t hit the same heights, or depths.
Opens Feb 28
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