Rooster: Steve Carell’s best role in a long time (review)

A funny, melancholic farce, which exudes sincerity and optimism. Watch on HBO Max.

He tirelessly pursues TV projects. From his time in The Morning Show on Apple TV+ to The Patient on Disney+, via Space Force then The Four Seasons on Netflix – all over the last five or six years – Steve Carell seems to be desperately looking for a role that matches his immense talent. This awkward force that made The Office one of the best comedy series of all time at the turn of the century. And perhaps with Rooster – to be seen today on HBO Max in France – the 63-year-old actor has (re)found the right fit.

In any case, this character of Greg Russo is truly cut out for him. Made to measure. Greg is a writer of successful station novels who becomes a teacher at the university where his daughter teaches, to help her, while she is at rock bottom after being cheated on by her husband. Greg is also a divorcee who is uncomfortable with his skills, not very in tune with society in general and even less with the new generation to whom he must now teach.

Steve Carell thus returns to his role as the lost fifty-year-old from Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), a score that he masters to perfection, tenderly clumsy and hilarious with grimacing expressions. His Greg Russo, known as Rooster – named after the hero of his novels – thus navigates this academic universe carrying a cheerful cockroach with him. There he meets an unlikely university president obsessed with saunas (played by the brilliant John C. McGinley from Scrubs), a resilient daughter (Charly Clive), an obnoxious British son-in-law (Phil Dunster) and lots of Gen-Z students whom he has a hard time understanding.

Into this happy mess, Bill Lawrence, the creator, was (again) able to inject the same positive energy that we find in Shrinking or Ted Lasso (on Apple TV+). This kind of sweet-salty atmosphere which completely refuses melodrama to remain in the optimism anchored in the body.

The result is a funny farce doped with sweet melancholy. Rooster is a pure comedy-drama, at times spectacularly funny, and at others incredibly moving. Infused with a permanent deadpan humor, an absurdity that seems to make fun of the little filth of life, the series manages to leave a place for each character, without ever judging. Without ever simplifying. Everything exudes sincerity. An ode to reconstruction written with great intelligence and which offers Steve Carell his best role in… ages.

Rooster, to watch on HBO Max in France.