Role Models
Rudd and Scott star in Role Models
Also In The News
|
Columbian international striker Hugo Rodallega could be heading to Steve Bruce's Wigan side later this month. |  |
Tuesday, 06, Jan 2009 03:10
Directed by David Wain, out January 7th in cinemas, starring Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bobb'e J Thompson, running time 99 mins.
In a nutshell...
Growing up is hard to do.
What's it all about?
After a day promoting and drinking a familiar-sounding energy beverage, underachiever Danny (Paul Rudd) is pushed to breaking point and crashes the company truck.
Though Danny avoids jail time by enrolling in community service with a child mentorship programme, he and party-hard colleague Wheeler (Seann William Scott) soon find their young charges - foul-mouthed Ronnie (Bobb'e J Thompson) and role-playing nerd Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) - aren't necessarily amenable to their brand of immature wisdom.
Can the world's worst role models help the kids as well as themselves?
Film Trailers from Filmtrailer.com
Who's in it?
Paul Rudd is probably best known for his work as Phoebe's husband-to-be Mike on Friends, though this ignores his years of sterling supporting work in the likes of Clueless, Rome and Juliet, and The Cider House Rules, and comedy turns in Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Role Models - which he co-wrote - is his biggest leading man role to date
Seann William Scott burst onto the scene as the moronic Steve Stifler in 1999's American Pie and despite starring roles in Evolution, Bulletproof Monk and The Dukes of Hazzard, will probably also be identified as the guy who gulped down a. shall we say, spunky concoction.
Bobb'e J Thompson has starred in The Tracey Morgan Show and That's So Raven while Christopher Mintz-Plasse stole the show as Fogell - aka McLovin' - in Superbad.
As an example...
"You know what I used to have for breakfast? Cocaine. Know what I had for lunch? Cocaine." - Gayle Sweeny
"What did you have for dinner?" - Wheeler
"Was it cocaine?" - Danny
"Well, well, well. If it isn't Mr Bulls**t and Dr I'm-full-of-s**t?" - Gayle Sweeny
"In what way are we full of sh**?" - Wheeler
"Which one of us has the Ph D?" - Danny
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars?
Not a chance, but it's set for the same cult status reserved to Frat Pack classics such as Old School, Anchorman and Dodgeball.
What the others say
"A great example of the Emotionally Stunted Men Grow A Heart sub-genre. Role Models staves off the January blues and puts a marker down as 2009's laugh-out-loud comedy to beat." - Ian Freer, Empire
"It may be slight, it may be derivative, but this comedy for (if not quite about) adults is also deliriously funny." - Anton Bitel, Channel 4 Film
So is it any good?
Far more satisfying than its premise might suggest. Rudd and Wain's screenplay is less family-friendly than you might imagine, with the leading men - and a typically forthright Jane Lynch - enjoying some decidedly 15 certificate dialogue and what you might have predicted to be formulaic turns out to be a comedy greater than the sum of its parts.
Yes, the plot arc's as syrupy as you might imagine - all about finding one's place in the world, even through KISS and medieval role-playing games - but Rudd is as capable as ever, Scott's surprisingly likeable and both pintsized potty-mouth Thompson and the endearingly geeky Mintz-Plasse
There's a fantasy role-playing climax - with the four principals clad in some iconic costumes - that's as gleefully silly as the World of Warcraft episode of South Park and it's clear that Rudd's learnt from his tutelage in the Judd Apatow school. Quotable lines zip back and forth between the leads - "Watch your language, Ronnie"; "My language is English and this motherf****r tried to grab my junk" - and Role Models is as exemplary a 21st century comedy as anything produced by Rudd's Frat Pack friends.
7.5/10
Lewis Bazley