That with "finally" you should bring a pinch of cinematic salt. This longing to take part in the copy of Ruben Östlund's superb relationship drama, which also took the opportunity to pull down the ski ball on the discreet charm of the middle class, is strictly academic: Can such a complex, fine-tuned entertaining and psychologically interesting journey across the Atlantic?
Well, we already have the answer per se, but you want to see the roll with your own eyes.
The basic conflict is the same:
A family is on a skiing holiday in the Alps, sitting on a restaurant up in the mountains when an avalanche seems to come towards them. The father gets scared and leaves his family in the lurch, but the avalanche does not reach. When the snow smoke subsides, he is forced to pocket back, now deprived of all his pondus and patriarchal position.
No, it's not as lousy as the preliminary reports claimed. If you just think Tourist (difficult!) And if you, as the undersigned, still like both protagonists, it is not a question of directly painful 86 minutes in front of the screen.
But there are obvious problems. Not least the sprawling fact that Julia Louis-Dreyfus acts as drama while Will Ferrell plays comedy. It's a bit painful to see how Louis-Dreyfus (who is said to have been the driving force behind the remake) fights for his character while Ferrell wanders around without control.
However, it should not just fall on them. Such a discrepancy is usually a clear sign of poor management. In this case, a less than good performance by the duo Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, who nevertheless wrote the script for Alexander Paynes, rightly praised The Descendants and who made their directorial debut with the not at all teasing The way way back. But it's probably also about Ferrell not having the dull strings on his lyre. When he has to look at the anxiety battle, really, it is most reminiscent of someone who is in dire need of a water closet.
But most damage still makes the ambiguity. Where Östlund's film fine-tunes a big drama for the family, Rash & Faxon clings forward with their big boots on.
This best exemplifies how the two films deal with the quiet climax of the story, where the father has to "save" the mother, in order for the family's group dynamics to be restored. Where Östlund lets us figure out what they are doing, the Americans add a scene where an angry Billie tells Pete, and us, why she agrees to this charade.
Downhill embarks on a lot of its own turns, some successful, others less entertaining. Like that six-wheeler hotel hostess (Miranda Otto with a cheeky accent), who fires at the common American image of Europe as an ever-ongoing swinger party.
She is first quite fun, then most annoying.
Downhill in a nutshell.
Downhill is available on various streaming sites