Film Review: Will & Harper

5 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | Nov. 2, 2024

The most interesting and heartfelt “buddy film” of the year is also a true story. In Netflix’s Will & Harper, we find an intimate and vulnerable documentary about a longtime relationship that also becomes an intentional allegory for America’s reckoning with transgender understanding.

The result is an emotional roller coaster as filmmaker Josh Greenbaum and his small crew follow famed actor Will Ferrell on a road trip across the country with his friend Harper Steele.

Will and Harper met 30 years ago on the set of Saturday Night Live. Ferrell was just a budding new cast member and Steele was one of the show’s talented writers. Ferrell was young and nervous, Steele saw his talent. Together they bonded over absurd jokes, bizarre sketch ideas, and a shared sensibility of pushing comedy to its limits.

In the beginning, Steele is living and identifying as male and married to a woman with whom he has two children. Known by performers as a genius writer of sketch comedy, Steele has a successful life on the outside. But on the inside, Steele has been reckoning with suffering and confusion, and over the course of many difficult years, begins the process of self-acceptance and self-acknowledgement. The source of that pain has been a lifelong attempt to conform her gender to society, even though Steele has always known who she is.

So in 2021, after years of hiding in the masculine as assigned by birth, Steele sends a series of letters to close friends. They explain for the first time what she has been going through, and she delicately announces her transition to her chosen name of Harper.

One of those letters was sent to Ferrell, whom she still considered one of her best friends but who had no idea what she had been going through.

When he finally realizes the depth of his friend’s struggle and the toll it has taken on her life, the cisgender Ferrell must confront his own understanding (or not) of her transition. And rather than being shy, he suggests the two go on a road trip across the country and talk about it. The premise is both to reclaim their friendship and redefine it—and to allow Harper the chance to experience traveling for the first time after her transition.

In her previous life, Steele delighted in roaming the country randomly and stopping at dive bars and juke joints for no reason at all. Ferrell is well intentioned in wanting to help her recreate that experience, and so the two set off for parts unknown together in hopes of finding a country where Steele will still feel safe and accepted.

And thankfully, for the most part, they do. But even traveling with Ferrell and using his celebrity as a softener isn’t enough to erase transphobia. That tension between hope and reality is the edginess that creates something honest and special. Harper’s bravery in exposing her journey to Will is profound and unlike any other dialogue many of us have heard about identity.

There are many moments of pure joy and laughter, but moments of darkness too. Both types had me fighting back tears in empathy and the clarity that there is no denying one’s truth.

Whether it’s a simple as the beer you prefer (Steele is fiercely loyal to “The Natty,” while Ferrell is a Modelo Man), or as complex as the fight to love and be loved, Will & Harper is an exceptional act of humanity in both concept and delivery, and I couldn’t recommend you watch it more.