In many ways, road trips are the perfect vehicle for self-discovery — both in life and in cinema. Removed from the distractions and routines of everyday life, the open road offers a unique opportunity to reflect, adapt, and grow. It’s in these moments, away from the familiar, that people begin to confront the parts of themselves they may not have the time or space or bandwidth to explore at home. The road becomes both a literal and metaphorical path, leading the traveler to a (hopefully) more enlightened plane of existence. The road trip film, then, is uniquely positioned to capture this particular vulnerability. Placing characters in a sort of endless locked-room, a place with both nowhere and everywhere to go, this subgenre allows them — and audiences — to experience the process of self-exploration through the journey.
Will & Harper, directed by Josh Greenbaum, takes full advantage of this narrative device, using a cross-country road trip to explore themes of identity, friendship, and acceptance. The film follows actor Will Ferrell and his longtime friend, writer Harper Steele, as they embark on a journey across America. The two met in the ‘90s during their time at Saturday Night Live and have maintained their friendship through the years. Recently, Harper, who transitioned later in life, emailed Will, sharing the news of her decision. In an effort to reconnect and learn about the person Harper has become, Will suggests revisiting the places she loved to frequent before her transition.
Within this premise lies the potential for either the overly saccharine or overly didactic — or both. But what makes Will & Harper so captivating is its refusal to reduce Harper’s transition to a political or social statement, or mine it for cheap sentimentality. Instead, the film is centered on the deeply personal and often humorous journey the two friends share, authentic where it could feel manufactured, moving in its matter-of-factness. The road trip allows them to reconnect, not just in visiting familiar places and the old haunts of memory lane, but by genuinely rediscovering each other in an entirely new context. From the perspective of outsiders glimpsing this shared intimacy, Ferrell brings welcome levity to the proceedings, helping to balance the weight of conversations that are often quite emotionally weighted, and the easy banter we witness, punctuated as it is by moments of vulnerability, keeps the film grounded in the casualness of long-lasting friendship, blessedly devoid of any semblance of performance.
One particularly affecting and nuanced scene occurs in a Texas steakhouse, where the friends are made into a spectacle. After leaving the restaurant, tweets flash across the screen, depicting the kind of predictably hateful rhetoric against trans people and those who support them that has all but become religion in red America. But rather than taking the opportunity to dig into heavy political discussion, Will & Harper smartly lets the tension speak for itself, refusing to let let any messaging overshadow the more intimate, personal story at its core. But while Greenbaum, Ferrell, and Steele ensure that their project restrains from becoming a political film, that doesn’t mean it ignores the realities of the world Harper faces, but rather that it understands the power and value in observing these things from the perspective of friendship rather than a larger cultural dialogue. Whether Will & Harper depicts instances like the steakhouse or the more everyday indignities of misgendering, everything on screen is handled delicately, without ever reducing its central duo to mere invitations to discourse. Will & Harper is far too heartfelt for such maudlin reductions and is instead content to ride shotgun, surveying the slipperiness of identity and the endurance of friendship through an intimate road trip lens, shared over too many cans of Pringles.
DIRECTOR: Josh Greenbaum; CAST: Will Ferrell, Harper Steele; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN THEATERS: September 13; STREAMING: September 27; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 54 min.
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