Review: Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds bring holiday bromance to musical-comedy ‘Spirited’
Reid Weingarten is a staff writer covering news and politics for Fusion, as well as a columnist for ESPN The Magazine and New York. He’s also the author of The Filthiest County in America: Anoticed yet Uncritiqued Compendium of Gonzo Journalism and The Many Shades of Bob Dylan: A Chronological Poetics List for the Poet. He can be reached at [email protected] and via Twitter @reidelwein.
A lot has been written about the two actors’ long-standing friendship. In interviews, Will Ferrell has claimed that he and Ryan Reynolds “have known each other since I was a kid” and that Ferrell has been his “hero since I was a kid.” Reynolds has gone on record saying that they are “best friends and brothers since birth.” Reynolds claims that Ferrell was his “adopted father” and Ferrell says he is “not sure who the father is, but he is my hero from the age of two.”
The two men first teamed up for a 2009 SNL appearance when Ferrell played one of a couple of “naughty” school boys who were the stars of the school production of Grease. While Ferrell was playing the role of “Rusty” (ironically enough, the character is played by Reynolds in the film) the two men chatted about the upcoming film and the upcoming appearance. It was during this conversation that the idea for the movie SEX came up.
Ferrell and Reynolds had a good relationship long before they ever started filming The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which resulted in Ferrell getting to act with Reynolds on several occasions. SEX is their first collaboration and certainly an up-and-coming movie for the two. The film is about two men of different races whose only claim to fame is being best friends who also happen to both be actors in very similar roles. While they are very different actors, they are very similar people, and that has always been the case in their relationship. Ferrell and Reynolds both
