Will Ferrell’s new Netflix movie finds him taking on an unlikely role.

From Robert Goulet to Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell has thrived embodying a particularly awkward brand of American masculinity, sending and serenading lovable fools who don’t realize their time has passed. And sometimes he did it with the help of Harper Steele, former editor-in-chief of Saturday night live who declared herself a trans woman during the pandemic. Ferrell, who started in SNL the same week as Steele in 1995, he has long considered her one of his closest friends. But neither was sure how Steele’s announcement would affect their relationship. Thus, in Josh Greenbaum’s documentary Will and HarperThe two embark on a cross-country road trip, using their hours behind the wheel to forge a new understanding of who they are to each other and testing it at stops along the way.

Harper, who, as she now says, previously “played a character named Andrew,” has always loved touring the country, stopping at bars and coffee shops and sleeping in cheap motels. But she’s not sure the places where she once felt most at home will welcome her newly visible self. Although she wouldn’t have thought twice about walking down a dark alley pretending to be a man, she is “learning to be a little more afraid of those things.” The course he charts with Ferrell takes them from New York City to Los Angeles, with a stop in his hometown, Iowa City, and leans heavily toward stereotypically American settings: a dive bar in rural Oklahoma, a steakhouse in Texas where the 72-ounce cut is free if you can eat it in less than an hour. Steele wants to know if she still fits into these places that have given her (a person whose core personality Ferrell describes as “born and raised in Iowa, 501 jeans, shitty beer”) so much joy, and if she’ll still feel happy. sure. Do American institutions have a place for her? And in how many of these institutions have trans people already found their place, whether the people around them know it or not? After all, Saturday night live I had a trans writer on staff in the mid-’90s. She just hadn’t come out yet.

Ferrell’s celebrity forms a gloom around them wherever they go, attracting good will and attention, though not all of it good. He’s used to being recognized, to the point that he cracks a joke at the camera on the rare occasions when his name draws a blank stare, but he realizes that he’s never felt the kind of scrutiny that falls on a woman. visibly trans in a deep relationship. -red crowd. “As much as I’ve been in a fishbowl at various times in my life,” he tells Steele, “this beats it all.” When Steele takes his first tentative steps toward a roadhouse in Meeker, Oklahoma, he leaves Ferrell in the parking lot to see what it’s like to do it alone. But she keeps her phone close at hand, ready to call him the moment she needs backup.

It turns out that the patrons of the Full Moon Saloon are perfectly hospitable to Steele, or at least as hospitable as they would be to any New Yorker with a camera crew, despite the ominous cut to a “Fuck Biden” flag in the snap. She walks through the door. (What’s not mentioned is the fact that even when Ferrell waits outside, she’s never really alone.) At a nearby racetrack, a man with a young daughter makes the invitation explicit: “Don’t be afraid. If you enjoy it, go out.” Although he finds more open-minded islands than some might expect, Will and Harper doesn’t romanticize the heartland and points out how some of the people who seem to at least tolerate Steele in person behave very differently when they don’t have to look a trans person in the eye. At a Pacers game, she and Ferrell shake hands with Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, only to discover in the car that he supported a bill banning gender-affirming child care and other anti-LGBTQ+ laws. . They emerge from that Texas steakhouse unscathed, but when the video of Ferrell’s heroic meat-eating goes viral, the Internet is flooded with transphobic responses. There may be no conscious hostility in the Denny’s waitress who addresses the couple as “gentlemen,” but Ferrell can be seen learning as the trip progresses, stepping in to correct misgendering and taking opportunities to avoid them in advance.

No road trip in the company of Will Ferrell can pass as mundane, but he works to present himself as an avatar of cis male normality, a loyal, big-hearted friend who nonetheless has many questions: When did you know? Do you still want to have sex? And how do you like your new boobs? sometimes looking Will and Harper It feels a little like you’re being led by the hand, even if you feel like you’re ready to walk on your own. But the film’s intentions are sincere, and it feels like many of the people Ferrell and Steele encounter on their journey could benefit from a basic-level course. Ferrell may be one of the biggest stars in the country, but he’s also a guy sitting in a Walmart parking lot with an old friend, chewing Pringles and drinking a Natty Light. (At times, the film’s penchant for displaying brand logos evokes the product placement jokes in Talladega Nightsbut if Dunkin’ Donuts wants to lend its name to the story of a middle-aged trans woman, all the better.) It’s as healthy and as American as it gets.