Amy Poehler’s Final Role As A Movie Star

Another relatively little-seen movie is currently occupying the upper echelon of the HBO Max charts: The House, a comedy starring Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler, was a major flop at the box office when it was released theatrically in 2017, arguably helping to turn the tide against Ferrell’s reign as one of the top movie comedy stars of the 2000s and 2010s. But Ferrell’s star was more or less secured; the movie may have had another casualty in the form of Poehler’s movie career. In fact, The House remains Poehler’s final leading role in a live-action theatrical release to date. She’s led two massive smashes with Pixar’s Inside Out movies, teamed up with her IRL friend Tina Fey for several hit comedies, and appeared in some semi-recent streaming movies. But in terms of all-time Saturday Night Live performers, which Poehler certainly is, she’s one of the very best to never establish movie vehicles of her own.

Plenty of talented comedians, even/especially Saturday Night Live cast members, haven’t quite made it as movie stars. In the past decade-plus especially, SNL is far more likely to spring alumni into TV comedy, where Poehler certainly achieved success through her long-running role as Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation. Her overall career, to be clear, has been strong and varied, encompassing film, several genres of TV, plenty of live comedy seemingly for the sheer fun of it, and more recently her chatty and entertaining podcast Good Hang. But given how many SNL stars have managed at least one unambiguous movie try-out, Poehler’s lack of same stands out.

One reason could be her team-based ethos. She came up in an early-2000s era of SNL that seemed closer-knit (relatively speaking) than the quarter-century that preceded her, and Poehler has carried that over to her biggest live-action movie successes, all of which teamed her with friend and Weekend Update co-anchor Tina Fey: Mean Girls, where both women have supporting parts opposite conniving teens; Baby Mama, where Fey plays an uptight professional to Poehler’s less settled live wire; and Sisters, which reverses their roles to make Fey the irresponsible one and Poehler the nerdy problem-solver. No other Update team — Colin Jost and Michael Che; Fey and Jimmy Fallon; Poehler and Seth Meyers — has ever translated their double act to the big screen.

As a comic duo, Fey and Poehler batted 1.000 at the box office. All three of their theatrical movies together were hits. But a decade after Sisters, her biggest movie as a co-lead, Poehler has yet to fully capitalize on that cinematic success. Maybe that job was supposed to fall to The House, which was indeed a big summer comedy from a major studio, teaming her with another popular SNL alum. The movie got savaged in the press (it wasn’t screened for critics), but in addition to being briskly amusing, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, and appealingly short (end-credit bloopers roll at the 81-minute mark), it crystallizes how often Poehler’s movies focus on domesticity or lack thereof. Though her SNL parts ranged from tween girl to elderly lady, while Parks and Rec charted Leslie Knope’s growth from youngish professional to more accomplished married mother of twins, she’s often placed in a motherly zone in her movies.

The House nudges her from that domesticated sphere into R-rated craziness, without the emotional grounding that Sisters nominally provides. She and Ferrell played a married couple whose teenage daughter is about to start a college they can’t afford to pay for, and gin up cash by starting an illegal suburban casino. Neighbors run wild (like in that movie, Neighbors, which was co-written by this movie’s director), card games lead to amateur boxing, eventually the mafia gets involved. In other words: zany antics ensue.

What The House taps into in terms of Poehler’s work is her ability to go from straight to unhinged in the space of a few minutes or seconds. Her Kate is a pretty normal housewife, if a touch needy for the love and attention of her daughter, but only requires the nudge of financial peril to start acting out as a pot-smoking casino boss. In a scene where she, Ferrell, and Mantzoukas task themselves with punishing a card-counter, she toggles between profane bravado and sober-minded hesitation. In other words, she keeps pace with a Ferrell specialty: the suburban normie who whipsaws between Mr. Hyde wildness and man-child panic. “This is the real me!” she exclaims earlier, while drunkenly peeing outside in her own lawn.

The House still doesn’t ever become a full Poehler showcase. Ferrell has his own version of essentially the same character to play alongside her, and again her penchant for teamwork is clear. In particular, The House feels like an unofficial Upright Citizens Brigade movie, with New York improv fixtures like Poehler, Mantzoukas, Rob Huebel, Lennon Parham, and Nick Kroll riffing their way through loosely conceptualized scenes. (A big chunk of this cast used to perform together at Poehler’s UCB outpost throughout the 2000s; in that context, Jack McBrayer’s absence is glaring.) There’s a similar dynamic at play in Wine Country, one of two movies Poehler directed for Netflix; an all-star cast of SNL ladies (Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer, Tina Fey, and writers Paula Pell and Emily Spivey) seem to be recreating their riffy real-life creative relationship. Sadly, even with the boatload of talent, it’s not as loose and funny as The House; it’s more like a marathon-length sitcom pilot for a show that you hope would improve.

Maybe it makes sense, then, that Poehler would cut out the writing and directing steps, and simply talk directly to her creative pals on her podcast. The tenets of good improv, sketch comedy, and long-running sitcoms don’t necessarily translate to three-act comedies, and Wine Country is a testament to just how many talented middle-aged women Hollywood can seem downright confused about casting. Still, part of what makes a threadbare comedy like The House so much fun is catching a later-period glimpse of Poehler going mad on film.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.