Film (Comedies)

Will Ferrell

Ferrell is probably the king of SNL alums who made the jump to the big screen, and he didn't wait long into his tenure on the show to start laying the groundwork. Sure, a lot of those roles were in mediocre-to-fine adaptations of recurring sketches, like A Night at the Roxbury, The Ladies Man, and Superstar. (We still think he made a better Christ than Jim "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre" Caviezel.) Those movies...happened. Ferrell shouldn't take all the blame; when he wasn't the headliner.

Thank God, then, that he found his way into the so-called "frat pack" of bro-y comedians that really made him a bankable box-office name. With a streak like Zoolander, Old School, Anchorman, Wedding Crashers, and Talledega Nights, Ferrell was killing it on-screen with a group of like-minded dudes that included Paul Rudd, the Wilson brothers, Vince Vaughn, Steve Carrell, and John C. Reilly. No longer relegated to one-joke missteps like Roxbury, Ferrell could now play his outsized characters within reliable, gag-a-minute fare — and his onscreen presence was pompous, juvenile, emotional, and ridiculous, often all in one character and sometimes in one scene. Perhaps the strongest evidence for how good he was in these films is his characters' extreme quotability — good luck finding anyone in their twenties without a working library of quotes from Ferrell's films.

Zach Galifianakis

If the devil asked you, “Would you star in a few episodes of forgettable TV in exchange for a lead in one of the most financially successful comedy films of all time?” I don't think many people would say no. The Hangover undoubtedly brought Galifianakis the most attention he'd had in his career up to that point — I doubt many remembered his turn as “Bus Stop Man” in Bubble Boy. (Though more than a few of my friends have quoted him in Out Cold: "No regrets. That's my motto. Well, that and 'Everybody wang chung tonight.") And much of Galifianakis' CV speaks to many, many years as a struggling (though obviously not failing) comic, with lots of little roles in movies peppered throughout two-episode guest starring stints on TV comedies. But then, The Hangover! For all the outrageous things the film threw at the audience, Galifianakis manages to be hilarious, while adding some actual nuance to his role as Alan, with a demeanor that instantly tells you of a life full of sheltered parenting and school lunches eaten alone.

Outside of the Hangover franchise, though, his record is not so much awful (give or take a G-Force) as it is thin. There's just nothing to match the insane streak Ferrell had going for a few years. Fun fact: Galifianakis did have a supporting role in another City of Sin adventure, What Happens In Vegas. Un-fun fact: that movie exists.