Will Ferrell: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Steve Butabi - A Night At The Roxbury (1998)

By now it's probably clear that buddy movies aren't really Ferrell's thing. Quite a few of his '90s films have slipped into semi-oblivion, and the reasons for that are pretty clear with this one. A Night at the Roxbury is a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched out into a feature-length running time and follows the story of two brothers who want to open their own club. The problem with this is not that they're idiots when it comes to business or women; instead, they're idiots when it comes to everything. A Night at the Roxbury has a similar dorky cult appeal as Dude, Where's My Car? But where that film's performances are purposefully shoddy, Roxbury's performances aren't even as good as that. You could sit through this movie and laugh at how bad the acting is, or you could just not subject yourself to a one-joke film in the first place. In 2003, Ferrell was still a newcomer, but by then he was desperate to prove himself. Here, he's content with being another silly SNL sketch player, lacking the vitality to even try and sustain an audience's interest over the course of the film. Ferrell's performance in Roxbury succinctly shows what it looks like not to care; but he doesn't even do that any justice.