15. Steve Butabi — “A Night At The Roxbury” (1998)
Ferrell’s first big-screen lead saw him go the route of many other ‘SNL‘ stars before him and try to take their trademark characters to the big screen — and again, it was pretty much a disaster critically and commercially. It’s not exactly a brilliant film — it’s almost entirely plotless, for one thing — but Ferrell and poor forgotten Chris Kattan’s club kids are so well lived-in by this point that it’s still pleasurable to watch them do their thing, even if there’s not much going on otherwise.
14. Mattress Salesman — “The Internship” (2013)
About the only shining light in a terrible, terrible movie, Ferrell’s cameo in glorified Google ad, “The Internship,” like the whole film, attempts to repeat the trick of “Wedding Crashers”
by livening things up with a surprise appearance. It doesn’t quite work
(mainly because, unlike ‘Crashers,’ the film around it is so bad), but
Ferrell’s still the best thing involved in the enterprise, playing Wilson’s
neck-tattooed, anal-sex-obsessed boss at a mattress store.
13. McDermott — “The Goods” (2009)
Really “The Goods” (which is bads) biggest problem is that with an okay premise about a
legendary car salesman, some decent jokes, and a cast heavy with
ringers (Kathryn Hahn, Ving Rhames, David Koechner, Rob Riggle, James Brolin, Ken Jeong, Ed Helms, etc) it all centers on Jeremy Piven‘s
smarmy, irritating lead. But Ferrell’s uncredited cameo is an
inarguable high point, a ridiculous, self-contained sketch, which sees him
falling to his death from an airplane dressed as Abe Lincoln, listing
his non-regrets while sex toys rain down around him.
12. Harold Crick — “Stranger Than Fiction” (2006)
Marc Forster‘s charming indie can’t quite sustain its fizzy, meta
premise until the end, but it did provide Ferrell with probably his best
“serious” role to that point, not that the story of a man who starts to
hear his life being narrated by Emma Thompson really falls into
the category of “gritty drama.” But Ferrell underplays nicely anyway,
tamping down the lunacy we often see from him, to turn in an
admirable everyman performance, with heart and just a glimmer of whimsy.
11. Ricky Bobby — “Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby” (2006)
The second and least of the five feature collaborations between the star and writer/director/longtime comedy pal Adam McKay,
“Talladega Nights” sees Ferrell play red-state NASCAR driver Ricky
Bobby, who becomes undone by his French rival and daddy issues. There
are plenty of top-notch jokes (horrible kids Walker and Texas Ranger
first among them), but it’s fattier than some of the others, and becomes
overly involved in its own plot in the last act.
