That "Downhill" exists isn't an indictment of Hollywood. Indeed, they've been squelching out inferior remakes of movies filmed in languages other than English for years.
And so it goes in this redux of "Force Majeure," a terrific Swedish film from 2014, a thoughtful film listed as a drama/comedy, but that goes relatively light on the latter. It's an examination of the family unit, gender roles, and the irreperable damage that a single character-revealing incident can cause in a relationship.
In "Downhill," Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus head up a film that takes the same plot and turns it into a passive-aggressive treatise on side-eye between a husband and wife.
Ferrell plays Pete, husband to Billie (Louis-Dreyfus) and dad to two boys. Pete loves his family, and takes them on a ski trip in the mountains, eager for some family fun on the slopes. While enjoying lunch at an outdoor mountaintop restaurant, an avalanche threatens their safety. Pete runs for his life, abandoning his family but stopping to grab his cell phone as he sprints to safety. When the potentially catastrophic event proves to be a light snow shower, Pete sheepishly returns to the table and awkwardly finishes lunch with his family.
The damage is done, though. Billie can hardly look at Pete, much less muster any respect or admiration for him. At first she has difficulty processing what has happened. Soon, though, her disdain begins to shine through.
But this is where the film falls off the rails, though. Rather than exploring the fractured relationship, the tattered remains of their marriage, and the potential damage done to their young sons, we are instead treated to a randy travel agent (Miranda Otto), a handsome ski instructor (Giulio Berruti), and a younger couple (Zach Woods, Zoe Chao), all serving as pain points and additional stresses to their vacation. All are pointless other than to distract from the plot, provide pointless comic relief, and manufacture a moment of temptation.
And so it goes for the film's runtime, as if screenwriters Jesse Armstrong and Nat Faxon are unsure whether the film's main conflict is enough to carry the movie. When it is resolved, it is done in such the same slapdash, scattershot way, wrapping it all up nicely in a bow with nary a trace of nuance or ambiguity. Just a line of dialog and off we go.
It's a disservice to the original film and the actors involved. Given a potentially juicy role, Ferrell instead dials up Clueless Everyman Number 14. Louis-Dreyfus does little but stare listlessly. Otto gives the film's most memorable performance, and is the best thing about the film. The problem is her character is wildly out of place.
It's not that the film is bad. It's certainly inferior to the original by a wide margin. It's just so achingly mediocre, so astoundingly lazy, that the result is perhaps worse than a spectacular misfire; it's just not memorable. It's a movie about dumb, self-absorbed Americans going to another country and being dumb, self-absorbed Americans. I'm just not sure if it realizes that.
The folly of "Downhill" doesn't lie at the feet of those who made it. Instead, it should be xenophobic viewers unwilling to make the effort to read subtitles or connect with characters who don't speak English, which feeds into the prejudices of Hollywood. They're not only missing out on tremendous cinema, but they're contributing to the machine that bastardizes some tremendous, thought-provoking films and adding to the reputation of American cinema as soulless, mindless dreck.
And what are we doing to disprove that?