‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’ and ‘Will & Harper’ show the beauty of showbiz friendship
‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’ and ‘Will & Harper’ show the beauty of showbiz friendship
Two of the year’s best documentaries each tell the touching story of friendship through laughter.
The story of a cinematic superhero who passed away 20 years ago and that of a roundtrip between two old friends — one a movie star, and the other a newly out trans woman — wouldn’t appear to have a great deal in common besides both being celebrity documentaries coming out around the same time.
But in truth, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Will & Harper are touching stories of friendship that took a surprising turn.
Directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, Super/Man is the story of Reeve, the star of the first successful superhero franchise, the Superman series, starting in 1978. It reminded me a bit of last year’s Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, another film about a beloved actor of the 1980s who went on to face a sudden health crisis, with the biggest difference being that Fox is still alive. And both expertly weave in archival footage, as well as film clips, with the narrative.
The documentary provides a comprehensive portrayal of Reeve’s life, depicting him as someone who overcame unhappy family circumstances to emerge in adulthood as a talented actor, a good man, and one of the best-looking people who ever lived. He had three children across two relationships, including two sons who are dead ringers for him.
The film acknowledges that Reeve never really had a hit movie outside of the Superman films, and only two of the four were all that great. Still, it doesn’t overstate that Superman was an absolute phenomenon that changed movies forever- and that Reeve, like so many movie stars in the MCU era, felt very strongly about being taken seriously as an actor, and worried that he wouldn’t be.
And then, in 1995, Reeve suffered a spinal injury in a horse-riding accident and lost the ability to walk or breathe on his own for the remainder of his life. During that time, Reeve wrote a memoir, directed a movie, returned to acting in a Rear Window remake, and started a foundation that has raised tens of millions of dollars for spinal cord injury research.
Reeve also got involved with politics, speaking at the Democratic convention in 1996; I saw him speak at a rally with Bill Clinton in Boston a few weeks later. He drew the ire of some disability activists when he appeared in a commercial that used CGI to show him “walking” following a theoretical cure for his injury.
The film follows on two parallel tracks, telling the story before and after Reeve’s injury.
Christopher Reeve died in 2004, and his wife, Dana, passed away just two years later from lung cancer, something that’s going to be an absolute gut punch to anyone watching this who didn’t know or remember that about Dana. As it was, this movie may have broken the record for most tears shed in a press screening.
But there’s another key throughline in the film: Reeve’s close friendship with Robin Williams, his roommate from Juilliard, who went to almost superhuman lengths to help out his friend, especially after his injury. Their friendship is the story beating heart of the film.
We see a lot of footage of Williams, by Reeve’s side and at charity benefits, trying to bust through the sadness with his trademark high-energy humor. It’s a familiar story for comics in general, and Williams in particular, to do exactly that, and talking head Glenn Close states at one point that if Reeve were still alive, Williams might be as well. A week after seeing the film, I’m still unsure if that statement was poignant, tasteless, or some combination of both.
Super/Man is being released in theaters by Fathom Events on just two days (Wednesday the 25th is the second), and it will land on CNN and/or Max later this year. Corporate sibling DC Films also has their logo on the film. I give them credit for not dropping in a self-congratulatory sizzle reel at the end of DC superhero films that followed Reeve’s because that’s what Disney would have done in this exact situation.
This is, in all seriousness, a fantastic film and a fine tribute to Christopher Reeve.
Will & Harper is another but very different story about a movie star and his friend.
The concept is simple: Will Ferrell, the major comedy movie star, receives a letter at the tail end of the pandemic from an old writer friend with some surprising news: The writer, Harper Steele, has come out at age 60 as a transgender woman.
Ferrell makes clear that he’s supportive of his friend and does her one better: He’ll go with Harper on a road trip around the country, including to rural and conservative areas, while the two talk over the big change, and with a documentary crew in tow. Ferrell asks the type of questions that are appropriate to ask of an old friend, under those circumstances, but less appropriate to ask a stranger.
If this sounds like a smug lecture about tolerance, that’s not what Will & Harper is. It never loses sight that these are comedy people who spend much of the road trip trying to crack each other up. It’s also a fascinating glimpse of Harper, a trans person whose demographic background — older, and from the rural Midwest — isn’t often depicted in popular culture.
In fact, the film shows people in bars and restaurants in rural America being much more congenial to Harper than stereotypes would indicate (people on the Internet, though? They’re as mean as you expected.) Matt Walsh ripped the project; as the maker of documentaries about how trans people are bad, he’s clearly threatened by a documentary stating that trans people are not bad.
The film was directed by Josh Greenbaum, an old Funny or Die hand whose past credits include Too Funny to Fail, that outstanding doc about The Dana Carvey Show (he also co-directed last year’s Strays, but I won’t hold that against him.) While way too many documentaries don’t care about aesthetics, he fills the film with gorgeous roadside vistas.
The film leaves one fascinating thing unspoken, although I wouldn’t have expected it to come up. Throughout his career, Will Ferrell has been associated with a particular writer: Adam McKay. McKay worked with Ferrell on SNL, wrote several of his movies, and formed both Funny or Die and Gary Sanchez Productions with him.
The two had a well-publicized falling out a few years back and reportedly no longer speak. Was Ferrell coming out of the pandemic, perhaps missing the lost fellowship and seeking out the companionship of another old writer friend, who also worked on SNL and wrote some of his movies?
A Sundance debut, Will & Harper debuted at Sundance, opened in some theaters earlier this month, and lands on Netflix on September 27. Like the Reeve film, it is one of the year’s best documentaries.