Will Ferrell's 'The Hawk' tees up silly sophomoric jokes, but that's why we're here

“The Hawk,” a 10-episode bid premiering Thursday connected Netflix, is simply a play comedy, a Will Ferrell drama and, astir to the point, a Will Ferrell play comedy, pursuing successful the enactment of specified sports-themed Ferrell films arsenic “Blades of Glory,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and “Semi-Pro,” and, astatine a stretch, “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.” It has the vantage of concerning a athletics the histrion loves and plays, making it consciousness affectionate and informed, adjacent arsenic it creates its ain silly world.

Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, whose vocation cratered successful 2010 aft helium choked connected the 18th spread astatine Pebble Beach, missing a three-foot putt “on the verge of a vocation Grand Slam.” Now, arsenic his lad Lance (Jimmy Tatro) is making a sanction for himself connected the PGA circuit, Lonnie is moving connected the insignificant league Korn Ferry Tour, putting connected a amusement with his longtime caddy and friend, Old Henry, played by Keith David, whose departure from the bid aft lone 8 minutes is simply a disappointment to me, arsenic a card-carrying David fan, whenever I get astir to printing those cards.

But it clears the mode for Fortune Feimster’s Sam, who conscionable happens to beryllium fixing her car successful a Walmart parking batch wherever Lonnie has parked his circuit bus, to go Lonnie’s caddy. She knows thing astir golf, and can’t drawback a play nine connected the alert — 1 of Old Henry’s tricks — but she has the due consciousness of amusive and immoderate bully ideas.

Lonnie’s imagination is to get backmost connected the PGA circuit and assertion that elusive expansive slam. (“You are a ball. I americium a man,” helium says to a play shot he’s astir to tee up. “Classic redemption story.”) It’s nary spoiler to accidental he’ll marque it backmost to the PGA, due to the fact that there’s nary amusement without it. Besides Lance, his rival determination is the subordinate helium mislaid to successful 2010, Golden Fisk, played by Luke Wilson, whose member Owen starred successful past year’s play comedy, “Stick.” (Ferrell sometimes sounds similar Owen here, oddly.)

Lance is engaged to Natalie (Katelyn Tarver), an aspiring wellness influencer, who polices his eating and drinking and conducts him successful his “manifestations,” but happily they don’t play her arsenic excessively overmuch of a caricature. If this were a romanticist comedy, she’d beryllium the expendable Ralph Bellamy character, but each Lance truly cares astir is play — dissimilar Lonnie, who mostly cares astir golf, but spends the full bid trying to get person to his son. He’s excited astir the accidental of their playing together. “We some tin beryllium great,” says Lonnie, comparing them to LeBron and Bronny James. “We’re not connected the aforesaid team,” Lance, little excited, points out.

David Hornsby arsenic Radford and Molly Shannon arsenic Stacy, Lonnie’s not rather ex-wife.

(Colleen E. Hayes / Netflix)

Molly Shannon, Ferrell’s aged “Saturday Night Live” castmate and “Superstar” co-star, plays Stacy, Lance’s overly doting parent and Lonnie’s not rather ex-wife. (He’s dragging his feet connected the divorce; he’s inactive into her.) She’s looking for a institution to administer an alcoholic crystal beverage she calls Teed Off and is successful a vaguely defined narration with “traveling companion” Radford (David Hornsby), a genial, gentlemanly benignant often seen speechmaking a publication (André Gide’s “The Immoralist,” E.M. Forster’s “Maurice”) meant to suggest he’s gay. (Not each spectator pays attraction to publication covers, but you’ll get the idea, anyway.) As with Natalie, oregon Golden, contempt the name, helium isn’t the caricature different bid mightiness marque him. In fact, isolated from Chris Parnell’s snobby committee member, Anton, who hates Lonnie and his fans, whom helium describes arsenic “low-class, T-shirt wearing, beer-drinking idiots successful their cut-off jeans and flip flops,” astir each quality is exhibits astatine slightest a proposition of quality decency.

A large galoot (though with bully play form), Ferrell again plays a benignant of overgrown child. (“Elf” is his defining role). He executes immoderate inspired concern with a manus stuck successful a pickle jar, and past mangled successful a car door, a coiled helium dresses himself with Paw Patrol band-aids, electrical portion and newspaper. Lonnie’s narcissism is truthful jolly and inclusive — helium assumes he’s a enactment everyone wants to be — that it reads similar a benignant of innocence. (A country successful which helium gives wealth to a mediocre household seems to beryllium lone to show his generosity.)

Shannon, who is fixed a bounty of graphic dialog detailing the unit she’ll wreak if idiosyncratic does oregon does not bash something, is simply a hurricane. And Feimster, whose travel this is arsenic overmuch arsenic anyone’s, gets a portion with tons of shades to play; she and Ferrell are the bosom of the show; the wellness of their narration matters much than who wins a play crippled — a theme, certainly, of galore a sports story.

It isn’t perfect. There are occasional problems with the mechanics of the plot; threads that way disconnected into thing aft coming from nowhere. Some scenes look to contradict what we we’ve seen before, particularly erstwhile it comes to Lance, who has a gambling occupation that comes and goes depending connected what the writers request him to do. Not everything aligns perfectly, and I recovered the climax wanting, adjacent off-putting successful immoderate respects. Unlike an existent sporting event, of course, the result is engineered, which doesn’t marque the play scenes little suspenseful oregon breathtaking for the viewer.

Created by Ferrell with Harper Steele (who wrote astatine “SNL” erstwhile Ferrell acted determination and is his co-star successful the 2024 documentary “Will & Harper”) and predominant Ferrell collaborator Chris Henchy, “The Hawk” is sentimental and juvenile — that isn’t a disapproval — its pee and poo and erection jokes delivered with large vigor. There are, of course, the benignant of improvised passages that person near their people connected a quarter-century of movie comedy, truthful that present and again a country spins into irrelevance, arsenic if beingness were conscionable a bid of skits — and possibly it is — but this does thin to beryllium comic and what we travel for, aft all.