Will Ferrell’s The Hawk has landed on Netflix with a review that calls its humor dated and crude. says the five-hour golf comedy stretches an older style of broad, ribald material past the point where it still works.
“Ferrell’s brash ladies man and loser golfer could have been hilarious. But comedy has sped up over the last two decades, and all the genital gags and dodgy references fall flat,” the review says. That verdict lands on a series built around Lonnie Hawkins, a once famous golfer on a long losing streak, and the gap between the character’s swagger and the show’s pace is the whole problem.
Lonnie Hawkins in five hours
“The Hawk revolves around Lonnie Hawkins, a once famous golfer on a long losing streak.” The review says he arrives on a tournament course in a big silver bus, then spends episode one stealing a watch from the corpse of a close friend. It is the kind of broad setup Ferrell used to turn into momentum, but the show spreads that energy across five hours of television instead of compressing it into something sharper.
“From the moment he careers on to a tournament course in his big silver bus (easily the funniest visual of the series), we understand Hawkins to be a maverick who answers to nobody.” That is the review’s clearest compliment, and it is also the sharpest critique: the character can still move, but the jokes around him do not. The comedy keeps reaching for the same register, only now the timing feels heavy.
Molly Shannon as Stacy
Molly Shannon plays Stacy, Hawkins’s estranged wife, and the review describes her as perpetually furious and foul-mouthed. Luke Wilson plays Golden Fisk, Hawkins’s longtime rival in the US Open, while the series also sends Hawkins against his son Lance in the same event. Those pieces matter because the show is not short on setup; it is short on payoff.
Chamillionaire’s Ridin’ and Sisqó’s Thong Song both appear in the series, with the latter backing Hawkins cavorting on the golf course in red underwear. The review sees that as part of a Frat Pack-style comedy package that once fit Ferrell’s era, alongside films like Zoolander, Dodgeball and Anchorman, but now reads like a throwback that has not adjusted to current comic tastes.
Ferrell at 59
Ferrell is 59, and the review’s real point is not that he has aged out of comedy but that the specific lane he is still driving in has narrowed. “Is it time it made a comeback?” the review asks of that style, and The Hawk does not answer the question so much as expose it.
For now, the sharp read is simple: if Ferrell is testing whether broad, bawdy sports comedy still has room, The Hawk suggests the market is harder than it was in the 2000s. The film and TV comic who could once coast on volume now needs cleaner timing than this series gives him.
