Even on the best of days, marriage is far removed from the bunny hill…

It’s a curse that will always befall on Hollywood as they try and remake popular foreign films for a North American audience and while Downhill does borrow a lot of beats from Force Majeure it mostly fails in execution because as it does nail some of the more awkward moments from the original it blows far too many for it to be an enjoyable experience.

Barely escaping an avalanche during a family ski vacation in the Alps, a married couple (Julia Louis Dreyfus & Will Ferrell) is thrown into disarray as they are forced to re-evaluate their lives and how they feel about each other.

To put it simply, this material just doesn’t translate nearly as well as they might have hoped as it misses a lot of the nuance of the original and suffers from uneven pacing and questionable casting.

The writing and directing team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash return here with some well meaning but obviously questionable results.  Following up their strong feature debut from 2013, The Way Way Back with what is essentially a remake of Ruben Ostlund’s excellent Force Majeure is a very nice idea but never quite captures the subtle nuances of the original source material where we get some pretty wry commentary not only on the state of modern masculinity but it takes genuine human frailty and conventional gender stereotypes flipped on their ear, however Downhill just has some fairly awkward characters being moderately boorish in a vacation environment that wasn’t designed for them.

The script ultimately tries to move far too fast through the bullet points of the narrative that it wants to get across along with its stunning mountain vistas and never allows moments a chance to breathe.  It’s hardly terrible but it feels very basic as it plays with ideas that could (and have been so much more).  It all makes for something interesting but ultimately unfulfilling at the same time as this awkward style of dark comedy rarely lands in a North American storytelling style as all the genuinely cringe filled moments get round off with some soft edges that will make you squirm just a little but never enough as we probably should as it tries to honor the original while playing as well as it can to a North American crowd.

If you’ve never seen Force Majeure you might actually have a shot at enjoying this film and really the only genuine bliss in this film comes out of the performance from the dynamic Julia Louis Dreyfus.

It’s no wonder that Dreyfus is a producer on this film as this really feels like it could play as an episode of Seinfeld with Jerry and Elaine on a family vacation with their kids at a cross roads in their lives.  She balances the genuine angst and drama of the material with the sardonic comedy that is laced in the material and gives quite possibly one of the best performances that she’s given in a feature film allowing us on the entire emotional ride that her character is on during this vacation.

Sadly Will Ferrell is just miscast in this movie and nothing he really does works.  His character is one that while he loves his kids is dealing with his own mortality and the things he feels like he hasn’t accomplished.  Both of these characters are supposed to be likable and kind of terrible all at the same time, and while Dreyfus accomplishes this with ease, Ferrell is left looking like a pathetic sad sack.  We’ll grant  that he’s supposed to be like that, but he never successfully conveys the anger at his previous actions or at his state in life.  He’s just a little too goofy, even when he’s at rock bottom and when he makes a genuine effort to redeem himself, we’re kind of past the point of caring.

Meanwhile out of the rest of the ensemble only Miranda Otto as the freewheeling sexually free hotel concierge Charlotte gets any kind of chance to shine and chew a little bit of comedic scenery along the way.

Ultimately if you’re coming into Downhill with no prior knowledge of the original, it will generate a couple of genuine moments for you but if you are familiar with 2014 film that inspired this film, you’ll be left wanting more.  Only Julia Louis Dreyfus really manages to connect with the spirit of the material and make us experience her journey her way through this story like it was meant to be done.