I recently had a great time reading Matt Singer's upcoming book Funny Business, about the 2000s movie comedy boom that minted new stars like Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Seth Rogen, and Steve Carell. Every boom eventually has its bust. It's rare for film comedies of any kind to be released in theaters these days, while most of the actors whose rises Singer chronicles have had to move to TV to ply their trade. Rogen has a pair of Apple series in The Studio and Platonic. Vaughn's work on Apple's Bad Monkey is the most fun he's been on screen in quite a while. HBO's Rooster is Carell's fifth different series of this decade. Wilson co-starred in Loki, then got his own TV vehicle, the Apple golf comedy Stick. Ferrell co-starred with Paul Rudd (another Funny Business subject) in Apple's 2021 miniseries The Shrink Next Door. Now it's his own turn at a golf comedy in the form of Netflix's The Hawk — which happens to also include Ferrell and Vaughn's Old School co-star (and Owen's brother) Luke Wilson.
As Jack Donaghy would say, we're going to make it 2003 again by science or magic.
Back when these guys were known as the Frat Pack, their output was notoriously uneven. For every Anchorman or 40-Year-Old Virgin, there were a half dozen stinkers like Bewitched or Dinner for Schmucks or Land of the Lost. Comedy is really hard, and even geniuses like Ferrell or Carell are capable of widely missing the target, or failing to elevate sketchy material. So it shouldn't be surprising that their arrival on the small screen has been similarly up-and-down. Some, like The Studio and Platonic, are genuinely excellent. Some, like Rooster and Stick, coast more on the charm of their actors than on the material they're given. And some, like Carell's Space Force, are tough to sit through.
The Hawk belongs in that last grouping, unfortunately.