It's Probably A Little Early For The Will Ferrell Eulogy Parade

Will Ferrell: Don't start writing his career obituary just yet. Jason Merritt/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

As you may have heard, the Will Ferrell vehicle Land Of The Lost got spanked at the box office this weekend by both the second weekend of Up and the opening weekend of The Hangover.

Reporting in with $18.8 million for its first weekend, the movie has already become the inspiration for the new Will Ferrell's career bereavement industry.

Putting aside the fact that the typical "Here's why it was always obvious that this movie would never do well" piece would be more convincing if it came out before, rather than after, the opening weekend, it seems a little early for all this.

Down, but not out, after the jump...

For one thing, Ferrell has always been a much shakier box-office commodity than these discussions would suggest. This particular run of comedies really starts with Old School in 2003 and Anchorman in 2004. Since then, you've got Talladega Nights and Blades Of Glory, but the EW eulogy tags all the other big comedies as disappointments, including Bewitched, Semi-Pro and Step Brothers.

There's an apparent eagerness to make this a kind of lousy opening a career-ender when it probably isn't, as the Los Angeles Times inadvertently demonstrated in its discussion of Ferrell's supposedly endangered career:

The verdict in Hollywood: Ferrell hasn't done a good job of managing his brand. [Adam] Sandler is the master of dumb hijinks. Eddie Murphy has become a cuddly family star. But who is Will Ferrell? No one knows anymore.

Wait. Eddie Murphy? He's being unfavorably compared to Eddie Murphy, in terms of managing his brand? Eddie Murphy from the opened-at-$5-million Meet Dave? Eddie Murphy, who last successfully appeared in the flesh as a "cuddly family star" in 2003 in Daddy Day Care? (2007's Norbit, at PG-13 for "crude sexual humor," does not qualify as "cuddly family star" material.)

Adam Sandler? That's fair. But Adam Sandler's history as essentially the guy he is now goes back to Billy Madison, and that was 1995. He's been doing that shtick for almost 15 years -- longer, if you count his time on Saturday Night Live. The alleged Will Ferrell streak that's coming to such an abrupt end runs from about 2003 to about 2007.

So is America "over" Will Ferrell? America was never convincingly in love with Will Ferrell -- not the way it is (for better or for worse) with Adam Sandler. In fact, if Eddie Murphy demonstrates anything relevant to this tale, it's that Land Of The Lost doesn't have to end Will Ferrell, any more than The Adventures Of Pluto Nash ended Eddie Murphy.

It's a story that's not over yet. It's not that it isn't bad news -- it's certainly bad news, if only because perception is reality, up to a point, when it comes to whether or not you are suddenly perceived as unsuccessful. But if it's true that Anchorman 2 is going to come down the pipeline in a bit, Ferrell still has time on the clock.

One high-profile flop does not a concluded career make. Just ask Ben "The Heartbreak Kid" Stiller, whose Night At The Museum is presented by the L.A. Times fairly convincingly as the likely inspiration for Land Of The Lost. After The Hearbreak Kid flopped in 2007, Stiller followed it with Tropic Thunder and A Night At The Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian. A lot can happen.