The new Will Ferrell golf comedy “The Hawk,” a 10-episode series on Netflix, follows in the line of such sports-themed Ferrell films as “Blades of Glory,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and “Semi-Pro.” It has the advantage of concerning a sport the actor loves and plays, making it feel affectionate and informed, even as it creates its own silly world.
Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, whose career cratered in 2010 after he choked on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, missing a 3-foot putt “on the verge of a career Grand Slam.” Now, as his son Lance (Jimmy Tatro) is making a name for himself on the PGA circuit, Lonnie is working on the minor league Korn Ferry Tour, putting on a show with his longtime caddy and friend, Old Henry, played by Keith David, whose departure from the series after only eight minutes is a disappointment to me, as a card-carrying David fan, whenever I get around to printing those cards.
But it clears the way for Fortune Feimster’s Sam, who just happens to be fixing her car in a Walmart parking lot where Lonnie has parked his tour bus, to become Lonnie’s caddy. She knows nothing about golf, but she has a proper sense of fun and some good ideas.
Lonnie’s dream is to get back on the PGA Tour and claim that elusive grand slam. (“You are a ball. I am a man,” he says to a golf ball he’s about to tee up. “Classic redemption story.”) It’s no spoiler to say he’ll make it back to the PGA, because there’s no show without it. Besides Lance, his rival there is the player he lost to in 2010, Golden Fisk, played by Luke Wilson.
Lance is engaged to Natalie (Katelyn Tarver), an aspiring wellness influencer, who polices his eating and drinking and conducts him in his “manifestations.” All Lance really cares about is golf — unlike Lonnie, who mostly cares about golf, but spends the whole series trying to get closer to his son. He’s excited about their chance to play together.
Molly Shannon, Ferrell’s old “Saturday Night Live” castmate and “Superstar” co-star, plays Stacy, Lance’s overly doting mother and Lonnie’s not quite ex-wife. (He’s dragging his feet on the divorce; he’s still into her.) She’s looking for a company to distribute an alcoholic ice tea she calls Teed Off.
A big galoot (though with good golf form), Ferrell again plays a sort of overgrown child. He executes some inspired business with a hand stuck in a pickle jar, and then mangled in a car door, a wound he dresses himself with Paw Patrol bandages, electrical tape and newspaper. Lonnie’s narcissism is so jolly and inclusive — he assumes he’s a party everyone wants to attend — that it reads like a kind of innocence.
Shannon, who is given a bounty of graphic dialogue detailing the violence she’ll wreak if someone does or does not do something, is a hurricane. And Feimster gets a part with lots of shades to play; she and Ferrell are the heart of the show. The health of their relationship matters more than who wins a golf game — a theme, certainly, of many a sports story.
It isn’t perfect. There are occasional problems with the mechanics of the plot; threads trail off into nothing after coming from nowhere. Some scenes seem to contradict what we we’ve seen before. I found the climax wanting, even off-putting in some respects. Unlike an actual sporting event, of course, the outcome is engineered, which doesn’t make the golf scenes less suspenseful or exciting for the viewer.
“The Hawk” is sentimental and juvenile — that isn’t a criticism. There are, of course, the sort of improvised passages that have left their mark on a quarter century of film comedy, so that now and again a scene spins into irrelevance, as if life were just a series of skits — and maybe it is — but this does tend to be funny and what we come for, after all.