‘The Hawk’ Scores a Triple Bogey

Will Ferrell’s new Netflix comedy The Hawk about a washed-up golfing great should be the latest in his harmless series of films about sports-adjacent characters who are wrong in every way except having undeniably good hearts.

Yes, Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins — the “greatest golfer in the world” as the title song has it — is an egotistical, deluded, self-sabotaging disgusting human being, but at least he is capable of apologizing, and he just wants everybody to love everyone else. I mean, he’s a narcissist so would ideally want people to love him first, but let’s give him some grace.

Sadly, though, despite barely having the content for an 80 minute film, the conceit is dragged out over ten tedious episodes. Beyond the inexplicable decision to extend to more than five hours, there are three existential problems with The Hawk.

The first is that the only way to make such a horrendously irresponsible man-child seem appealing is to make everybody else around him even less appealing. That means that the entire cast with the possible exception of the caddies and their families (including Fortune Feimster, who plays the part of Lonnie’s caddie Sam) is utterly horrible. That means for every half hour episode, you’re swimming through a tide of egotistical human trash searching for a nugget of worth or even, possibly, humor.

The second problem is that there is basically no character development from minute one of episode one to the excruciating end of episode ten. Sam arrives and, as well as caddying (she knows nothing about golf), she drives the large golf bus that takes Hawkins from course to course. The old bus is a tired stand-in for Lonnie’s character and it changes about as much. It’s no surprise Sam knows how to fix both Lonnie’s mind (“golf is a mental game”) and his engine (a 72.42 fan belt).

Everybody is exactly who they appear to be at all points throughout the show. Yes, there are plots which allow Lonnie and his son Lancelot “Lanny” Hawkins (Jimmy Tatro) to take their relationship on two steps, but every character and every relationship is fixed from the beginning and there are zero surprises.

Essentially invited in to do pantomime roles, Luke Wilson plays the villain golfer Golden Fisk and Molly Shannon plays Stacy, the lying, conniving wife of Lonnie, the mother of Lannie. They arrive with “Baddie” and “Bitch” stamped on their foreheads and they deliver the pastiches with gusto. The only character arcs we see in The Hawk are those parabolas described by the golf balls.

The third problem with the show is that there are essentially no jokes. There are a few amusing escapades and Ferrell is the same charming goofball as in Blades of Glory, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Ferrell will Ferrell). But there’s actually not a single funny line in the whole five hour bonanza. Yes, you can see Feimster and Ferrell dueting on a Chili’s advert from the last millennium but if that passes for comedy writing then bring on the AI.

Unlike comedy, there’s lots of golf in this series about the PGA Tour, which is — for better or worse — exactly as entertaining as you find golf. On the last hole, Lonnie scolds the ball that he has pulled badly — talking to golf balls is one of his “endearing” characteristics. Though he is ostensibly talking about the ball’s decision to avoid the fairway, here he might as well be apologizing for The Hawk.

“You think this is funny? you think this is a comedy? Cause it’s not. This is all business.”