Customer Reviews

Saturday Night Live - The Best of Will Ferrell

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This DVD is great, but could've been much better. At only 75 minutes, SNL/NBC are giving a [weak] product. Of course Will Ferrell doesn't disappoint at all on this though. Skits include:

-Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult ("more cowbell")
-Spartan Cheerleaders @ a chess match
-"Dissing Your Dog" commercial
-Harry Carey show
-the annoying lovers (with Rachel Dratch)
-the pretentious NYC store clerks (with Jimmy Falon & Sean Hayes)
-the bum as the nude art school model (can't remember his name)
-fishing with Bush Jr & Sr
-Jeopardy with "Burt Reynolds" "French Stewart" and "Sean Connery"
-Robert Goulet does gangsta rap
-Bobby & Marty Culp at the Drug Awareness seminar
-Inside the Actors Studio w/Charles Nelson Riley
-Roxbury guys with Jim Carrey

the extras are pretty cool..especially the deleted skit with the "old prospector." I think that's the funniest thing on the whole DVD. It also has Will's "tryout" with SNL, and 2 Conan O'Brien appearances.

But what is missing is the Neil Diamond Storytellers. I can't believe they left that off. SNL/NBC really could have given everyone a quality product but they just phoned it in.

Like most Saturday Night Live 'Best Of' compilations, it would be more accurate to call this a random sampling of Will Ferrell skits than his greatest ones. How else do you explain the fact that there are throw away skits like the dysfunctional family, yet only brief clips of him doing George Bush and Janet Reno, among others. Also there are a few skits on this that are also on the Best of SNL 96-97 tape.
With that said, this DVD does have enough funny skits and redeeming value to make it worth checking out. You can't go wrong with him playing a flustered Alex Trebeck in 'Celebrity Jeopardy;' his Marty Culp the singing/preaching principal is also always good for a laugh. Both longtime fans and those who don't know Ferrell's work as well will appreciate the range, audacity, and irreverence of the characters he played.
There are also some good extra features, including two very funny apperances on Conan O'Brien. Again this is not perfect, but still is well worth a look.

It's true that Will Ferrell's contributions to SNL can't be summarized on one dvd, especially not one running a little over an hour (one episode of SNL is 90 minutes), but that's not to say that the material here isn't hilarious. The problem with these collections is that fans have their favorites and almost always a few of them are missing and that's definitely the case here. In fact, some of the particular recurring sketches like "Jeopardy" & "Inside the Actor's Studio" could've chosen better examples than what ended up here for those. Again, what is here is funny and the extras are nice too. Here are the sketches in order that make up the main feature (the sketches are pretty complete except for where I list them as "snips":

Marty & Bobby Culp: Drug awareness assembly
VH1 Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult (with Christopher Walken)"More Cowbell, baby!" - A personal favorite!
Dissing your dog training video
Spartan Cheerleaders Chess Team tournament
Robert Goulet: Coconut Banger's Ball
Snips - Will in thong at business meeting/Mini Cell Phone at new wave store/Rachel Dratch gives birth to Will
Jeopardy: Burt Reynolds, Sean Connery, French Stewart
Inside the Actors Studio: Charles Nelson Riley (Alec Baldwin)
The Devil teaches Garth Brooks a song
Snips: George W. Bush/Janet Reno boxing Guliani/Clinton, Monica, & Saddam on the phone
Space the Infinite Frontier with Harry Caray (& Jeff Goldblum)
Hot Tub Luvas (with Drew Barrymore)
Roxbury Guys (with Jim Carrey)
Snips: Good Morning Latte/Dog Show
Nude guy poses for Art Class (with Lucy Lawless)
Family yelling at dinner (with Sarah Michelle Gellar)
Jacob Silj: Voice Modulation (on Weekend Update)

Extra Features:

Will Ferrell's audtion for SNL as Harry Caray
Unaired Dress Rehearsal sketch: Prospector in the Army
Will's Conan appearance in black underwear (plugging Roxbury)
Will's Conan appearance as Goulet

Outtakes: Hot Tub Luvas (with Winona Ryder), Goulet as Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Sketch (with Seinfeld), Voice Modulation on Weekend Update, George W Bush & George Bush Sr. (Dana Carvey), Neil Diamond on Weekend Update, Fight in club (with Ellen Degeneres), Tap dance (with Katie Holmes), and Mini computer email at New Wave shop (with Pierce Brosnan)

As you can see, the disc is above average in content and as far as these collections go, this one's up there. None of these collections will be perfect because the focus is on stars who have done a slew of hilarious sketches and many of them will be left out. Personally, I was disappointed to not see the VH1 Behind the Music on Neil Diamond...priceless. I agree with a previous reviewer that said Will needs something like a three disc set to even scratch the surface of his hilarious work on SNL, but this is better than nothing and probably as good as it will get unless SNL one day sees Season set releases. So I'd say start digging up your dubbed from TV SNL marathon VHS tapes, unless you have none, then by all means pick this up!

This was a DVD that had to be made, and everyone knows it. Sketches include:
--Anti-drug school assembly musical number
--Blue Oyster Cult ("I need more cowbell!" shouts Christopher Walken)
--Robert Goulet infomercial for his CD
--Craig the cheerleader working a chess match
--Ferrell as: George Bush, Janet Reno (boxing Rudy Giuliani), Saddam Hussein (on 3 way phone call with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky)
--As James Lipton of Inside the Actor's Studio interviewing Alec Baldwin

--His Harry Caray impression
--As Alex Trebek on Jeopardy, with contestants including Sean Connery and Burt Reynolds
--As professor Roger and his hot-to-trot wife Virginia in the hot tub, harrassing poor business traveler Doug (Jimmy Fallon)
--As one of the Roxbury brothers with Jim Carrey and Chris Kattan
--Substitute art class nude model Terrence Maddox
--Infomercial for Dissing Your Dog
--Weekend update special guest Jacob Silj
--Father of a dysfunctional family with Sarah Michelle Gellar as his rebellious teenage daughter

Extra features include his SNL audition routine (he does his Harry Caray, a Ted Kennedy, and some original characters), two Conan O'Brien guest appearances, some outtakes, and one hilarious dress sketch which never made the final show in which he played Old Prospector Gus Chiggins, assigned to accompany an army unit into Afghanistan.

You know this stuff is good--in half the sketches, the other actors are sobbing they're trying so hard not to laugh. Especially Jimmy Fallon, who finds Ferrell so funny he snorts out half his lines. And through it all, Ferrell stays in character, fully committed. As James Lipton would say, "What courage! What humanity! We are in the presence...of greatness!"

But any Ferrell fan will instantly rattle off several classic Ferrell sketches which are missing: Doug, the face of erectile dysfunction; the bad doctor; the commercial for the hamburger helper mix with antibacterial agents for weeks old ground beef, etc. NBC really needs to honor Will's body of work by issuing a second volume, or a box set, even. Such work must not be relegated to the whims of Comedy Central reruns.

After viewing the new DVD featuring Will Ferrell's "best" on Saturday Night Live, I must say that I am a bit disappointed. While many of the sketches featured were funny, such as the Blue Oyster Cult Behind the Music and the Culps singing about saying no to drugs, I felt that much of his most knee-slapping material was omitted from this DVD. Where's the Janet Reno Dance Party where the former attorney general actually shows up? Where's the Spartan cheerleader sketch with Jim Carrey as foreign exchange student Lockmiel? Most importantly, where are the Bush/Gore sketches that were highly successful during the 2000 election? We only see Ferrell as Dubya for a split second on this DVD! I hope SNL is planning a "Best of Election 2000" DVD. Otherwise, there is no excuse for leaving this stuff out.

If you are a fan of Ferrell's sketch work, I would recommend renting this. I personally would not buy it. I've seen funnier "Best Of" collections from former SNL alumni. I don't think this DVD does justice to Ferrell's long run on the show. But do enjoy what is offered anyway. I wouldn't call this DVD a total loss, but I would call it incomplete.

I must say that I was dissapointed in the best of DVD for Ferrell. It was only 73 minutes and most of that was filled with the cheesest stuff like "The Spartans" cheerleeder crap. You do get Terrance Maddox and the Cow Bell but there is no "Neil Diamond" or the "Bad Doctor" stuff. There is only one Harry Carry part and only 20 second clip of his George W Bush work. SNL missed the boat on this one. If you like the "Alda Music Teachers" type stuff then this is your DVD. I would rather see Mr. Tartanian beat the crap out of his employees than watch the cheese of the Roxbury Night Club. That is just not funny. The best of Will Ferrell should be a 3 Disc set so everyone gets what they want out of it. We get one commercial parody of the "dog trainer," and I admit that it is funny. Only one though. One Celebrity Jeopardy but it wasn't the sharpest or "best of." I know a lot of people who were waiting for this to come out and they are going to be upset.NBC and the Producers at SNL don't really know the fans of Will Ferrell. A few laughs when it could have been great.

A DVD can hold around 3 hours of video per side, so think of all the unused potential in this disc that only runs 72 minutes.

Ferrell was my all-time favorite cast member, and there are literally DOZENS of his hilarious skits that didn't make it in this collection. Remember his portrayal of Fred Friendship in the "Jingleheimer Junction" sketch with Tim Meadows and Cameron Diaz? I nearly passed out from laughing too hard when I first saw that one. And there are too many more to mention.

I looks as if SNL just took the bits from the TV-aired "Best of Will Ferrell" episode and put it on a DVD, along with a few other bits and pieces. If they'd truly mined for Ferrell gold, they'd have put out a 2-DVD set with a LOT more.

To be fair, though, there are some features on this disc which are very interesting and were previously unavailable. We get to see 2 of his appearances on Conan O'Brien's show (featuring Will in character as Robert Goulet in one of them) and his audition spot for SNL in the mid 1990's. In that spot, we get to see the origins of some characters and sketches that would find their way onto SNL over the years.

Still, having this DVD is better than NOT having a Will Ferrell DVD. But distilling his best bits onto a 72-minute DVD is like releasing a Beatles "Best Of" compilation on a 4-song EP.

I love Will Ferrell as much as the next fan. He is a true comic genius, as demonstrated by his SNL audition (which is included on the DVD). However, I disappointed by the selection of skits included on the DVD -- there were so many other skits exponentially funnier than those included. As the other reviewers noted, it was a bit short & limited, and those that were included were funny (as you can't go wrong with Ferrell) but not "the best" as the title states.

As a huge Will Ferrell fan though, I would still recommend it to other fans. Just don't expect "the best."

I purchased volumes 1 and 2 as a package, and I must say that I don't recall ever being so disappointed in a DVD purchase.

Will Farrell, in my opinion, is one of the funniest actors to hit the set of SNL. There were mountains of classic sketches from which to choose when compiling these this set, yet these releases are terrible. Volume 1 has one Jeopardy sketch (quite funny, of course) and a very, VERY small snippet of Farrell doing his Bush thing. Everything else is pretty much trash on Volume 1. Scattered throughout volume 1 are a bunch of three- or four second clips from "C+/C" sketches. I kept getting pissed when one would start and I'd think to myself "finally, one that I can force myself to laugh at", and it would get cut off. Well, in volume 2, some of these sketches are shown in their entirety. You can't but feel double-charged for SNL's double-dip on these clips. Volume 2 is just as empty as volume 1 in that it really doesn't contain Farrell's best material. Where are the presidential debates? Where are the other jeopardy sketches (remember: out of BOTH releases, we only get ONE)? Where are the sketches of the angry father who lashes out at his kids in sudden bursts of rage? I'm not exaggerating when I say that the entire collection seems like the producers ordered all of Farrell's sketches from "most hysterical" to "barely made the cut", and then started at the wrong end.

I won't be surprised when volume 3 is released: "Best of Will Farrell: No, seriously."

This entire collection is just dreadful. I'm a big fan of Farrell's and this collection is a disgrace. I wouldn't recommend either release to even the most loyal of fans. I'm giving it two stars instead of just one only because it's Farrell.

I got this especially for the cow bell episode, its so stupid so hilarious, and so Will Ferrell, buy it.