Role Models
2008
Danny and Wheeler travel from school to school doing a "just say no to
drugs" dog-and-pony show, the real purpose of which is to sell energy
drinks. They are two guys going nowhere, although the difference
between them is that Wheeler doesn't care. He's an
overgrown frat boy whose life revolves around parties and poontang, and he
actually enjoys wearing a minotaur suit all day. Danny, however, once
envisioned a real life, and has fallen into a deep and gloomy state of
permanent depression.
Danny has a particularly bad day and loses it, causing the two of them
to get sentenced to 150 hours of community service in lieu of jail time. They
get assigned to the judge's favorite charity, which is kind of a "big
brother" organization which pairs up male volunteers with boys who need
adult male role models. Wheeler (Stifler) is paired with a foul-mouthed
black kid with a real attitude, and Danny (Paul Rudd) is paired with an
older teen (McLovin) who is lost in a fantasy world of live-action role
playing in which the participants create medieval kingdoms. It's kind of
like playing Dungeons and Dragons in the park with plastic swords.
The film often misfires when it parodies the big brother organizations,
and the basic storyline progresses like about a hundred movies you've
already seen. In fact, you already know exactly what will happen, believe me. On
the other hand, the characters are drawn from life, the dialogue has a
certain raunchy charm, and the film has several good things going for it:
1. The scenes involving the role-playing game are very entertaining.
The film somehow manages to present this world (which really exists) in a humorous
light, but without contempt. Indeed, Danny's contemptuous first impression
is soundly rebuked by his character arc. Damn, I promised myself I would
never use the term "character arc." That means I've now used every cliché
in the English language except "deconstruct."
2. Jane Lynch, as the head of the big brother group, is wildly funny
and sometimes so far off-the-wall that her lines are utterly baffling,
which somehow makes them funnier. (I wonder how much she ad-libbed.) She
manages to exude an aura of insanity beneath the tough-hearted compassion
she shows for the kids, all while constantly reminding the adults that she
used to suck cocks for blow (and she uses those words).
3. There are three or four scenes that had me howling out loud at the
dialogue. Two examples:
In one scene, McLovin gets a bunch of laughs by delivering a stirring
speech to his medieval warriors, an inspirational call to battle might rival Kenneth Branagh's in Henry V - except that McLovin peppers it
with x-rated 21st street slang and incongruously dwells on the
anachronistic fact that he looks like a young Marvin Hammlich. (Which he
does, now that I think about it.)
In another, which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, Danny's
lawyer girlfriend tries to get a client to accept a plea bargain instead
of pleading not guilty, which he insists he must do despite the fact that
he was caught burglarizing a store on the security cam. His defense of
"that could be any bald guy" to the first part of the tape is somewhat
belied by the next part, in which he announces his name and crime on the
tape by saying something incriminating to his crony - something to the
effect of: "Whoever thought that I, Joe So-and-so, would be here in the
Best Buy Warehouse on July 4th, 2007, stealing all the Panasonic XD-17
Plasma TVs?" No matter. He still insists he is innocent.
Bottom line: a pleasant, raunchy, adolescent way to pass the time! I
enjoyed it.
(Critics were split down the middle, and none were rabidly
enthusiastic, but the IMDb fanboys love it to the tune of 8.0, thus giving
McLovin's Henry V impersonation a higher score than Branagh actually
received for Shakespeare's version.)
Cam-quality videos. (Not my videos. I haven't seen a screener yet, and
actually saw this one in the theater!)
