Will & Harper is a film going for a broad audience and delivering mass messaging. Its cause is righteous and its motivations pure. The movie’s premise is simple: two longtime friends, one of which has recently transitioned into becoming a woman, decide to take a road trip from New York to California to see sights while maneuvering the changing elements in their relationship. One of the friends happens to be Will Ferrell, the comedy star of Saturday Night Live and several high grossing films. Ferrell has given “serious” performances before, but vulnerability has never been a calling card of his style. In Will & Harper he aspires to give us an honest look at himself, trying to learn to help his friend, Harper Steele.

Harper was a writer at Saturday Night Live when Ferrell was a regular cast member, and the film cites Harper as a major behind-the-scenes force of Ferrell’s success. For the first sixty years of his life, Harper lived as Andrew. Andrew liked cheap beer and dive bars, watched basketball and monster truck shows. At 60, Andrew finally revealed that he’s truly Harper, and felt that way as long as he could remember. When she writes Will to tell him about her transition, Will is immediately accepting, but he’s also aware that things have to change. The friend he’s loved for decades never really accepted who they were – how does that effect his attempts at trying to be friends with Harper?

Their solution is to take a road trip across America. In between NYC and LA, they’ll skim the locales of middle America that are Harper’s favorite places. Will the small town dive bar still accept her as a woman? Will she still enjoy sitting at the basketball game in her more accurate identity? At her age, with so much family and friends knowing her as something else, these questions feel uncertain, even scary. So Will joins her, not only to show unwavering support, but to be almost a buffer between Harper and the hostility she anticipates from the outside world. As they travel by car, stopping frequently to be among the people, they inevitably are confronted with small doses of intolerance, but they mostly encounter acceptance, sometimes in places they least would expect it.

Will & Harper is a film about a trans woman, but it’s not really for a trans audience. Anyone who has even basic empathy won’t need to witness Harper’s journey to learn acceptance. Director Josh Greenbaum – and to a certain extent, the film’s two stars – are pretty transparent as to what they expect this film to be: a primer for those still uncomfortable with the concepts of trans identity. Major bigots will walk right past, but centrists hiding behind the excuse of “not understanding” probably would learn a thing or two about the hardships of those who feel trapped in the wrong body. For others, the movie’s many over-produced sequences may feel a little pat in their observation.

There are a selection of moments where Will & Harper feels truly candid, and those are by far the best moments. The best of those is probably a seen at the Grand Canyon where they meet a well-meaning therapist still feeling guilt about something that happened decades before: a patient confessed to feeling like a trans woman and she gently, but assuredly dissuaded them of that notion. The moment is softly heartbreaking and shows how any rejection – no matter how small – of identity can come with dire consequences. As the film’s best scene, it also shows that the film is more concerned with cis gendered audiences – not inherently a bad thing, but might leave some audiences disappointed.

As you expect, Ferrell gives the movie some genuine laughs, and we do get some moments of true vulnerability from the comedy superstar. The relationship between the two feels authentic, so much so that the camera in front of them seems to provoke an awkwardness that may not be there otherwise. This is a pleasant enough film that is probably more important as a document of trans integrity than cinematic artistry. One gets the impression that there’s very entertaining B-roll that was cut out since it didn’t push forward the message. If this changes the mind of even 1% of the people who watch it on Netflix than it’s a net positive, even if it’s not a particularly superlative film.

 

Directed by Josh Greenbaum