Will & Harper – a charming but impersonal road… | Little White Lies

Will & Harp­er – a charm­ing but imper­son­al road trip movie

11 Sep 2024 / Released: 13 Sep 2024

Words by Juan Barquin

Directed by Josh Greenbaum

Starring Harper Steele and Will Ferrell

Two people taking a selfie in front of a "Welcome to Texas" sign.
Two people taking a selfie in front of a "Welcome to Texas" sign.
4

Anticipation.

Two comedians on a road trip? Sign me up.

3

Enjoyment.

As fun and boring as any extended car ride.

3

In Retrospect.

Its casual charm lingers beyond dull educational beats.

Will Fer­rell and his best friend Harp­er Steele embark on a cross-coun­try road trip, reflect­ing on Steele’s expe­ri­ences as a recent­ly out trans woman, in Josh Green­baum’s mean­der­ing but sweet documentary.

If coun­try roads were designed to take one home to the place they belong, what of those who find them­selves at odds with the very roads they once found solace in? This is pre­cise­ly what Josh Greenbaum’s Will & Harp­er ques­tions as it fol­lows for­mer SNL writer Harp­er Steele (a recent­ly out trans woman) and her best friend (Will Fer­rell) on a road trip across the USA.

It’s a sim­ple premise for a sim­ple movie – one that spends its run­time serv­ing as some­thing of an extend­ed ther­a­py ses­sion for Steele. Or per­haps it’s more rea­son­able to call it expo­sure ther­a­py, com­plete with Steele open­ing her­self up to friends and strangers alike for mild­ly intru­sive ques­tions, plen­ty of mis­gen­der­ing, and sin­cere­ly heart­break­ing per­son­al rev­e­la­tions of what exist­ing as clos­et­ed did to her.

For Steele, trav­el­ling across the coun­try while pre­sent­ing as male was a source of com­fort, tak­ing great plea­sure in find­ing dive bars and seedy joints to vibe with strangers. It’s heart­break­ing to watch her explain how much anx­i­ety she has over some­thing she used to love sim­ply because of her tran­si­tion, but that is exact­ly why Fer­rell is there. He is both a pil­lar of sup­port and a means of bring­ing out the laugh­ter and joy that exists in Harp­er, and there’s some­thing beau­ti­ful about the way the two bounce back and forth sometimes.

The thing about Will & Harp­er is that so much of it feels pol­ished to the point of unbe­liev­abil­i­ty. Ferrell’s fame obvi­ous­ly offers some lev­el of safe­ty net, as does the pres­ence of an unhid­den cam­era, but it extends beyond that. Where casu­al con­ver­sa­tions between the title char­ac­ters” come across as hon­est and play­ful, as do those with peo­ple from Harper’s own life (includ­ing her chil­dren), many of the set-ups with strangers across Amer­i­ca come across as not quite staged, but cer­tain­ly scout­ed for safe­ty and san­i­tized to the point of ques­tion­ing their verac­i­ty. There’s no urgency, no dan­ger, which is cer­tain­ly bet­ter for the trans woman at its core, but it makes these scenes fall flat and there’s not much Green­baum can do to enliv­en them.

This kind of neu­tral­i­ty is some­thing that’s per­fect for a cis audi­ence inex­pe­ri­enced with any­thing trans, but it makes one long for more of the highs and lows that the film show­cas­es. An extend­ed bit with anoth­er trans woman that Harp­er met in the past, where the two dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences, is gen­uine­ly love­ly and reveal­ing, as is one of Harper’s low­est points where she reveals the lengths she took to ini­tial­ly tran­si­tion and how much she felt like a mon­ster. All the cameos from for­mer SNL play­ers and writ­ers (save for Kris­ten Wiig, who is asked by the duo to write a sil­ly lit­tle song for their road trip) weigh the film down, but pre­sum­ably serve as anoth­er lay­er of relata­bil­i­ty, or nor­mal­cy”, for an audi­ence unfa­mil­iar” with trans people.

Its lack of any the­sis oth­er than bare-bones edu­ca­tion makes Will & Harp­er a hard film to label. It’s a doc­u­men­tary that feels a lit­tle too delib­er­ate­ly man­i­cured for its own good, it’s not enough of a por­trait of these small Amer­i­can towns to be con­sid­ered a trav­el­ogue, it’s not espe­cial­ly edu­ca­tion­al in the way it pur­ports, and it isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny enough to be much of a com­e­dy. As such, it’s just float­ing in a no-man’s land, a charm­ing but imper­son­al film about a deeply per­son­al journey.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.