Role Models
Posted on November 6, 2008 at 6:00 pm
B-| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for crude and sexual content, strong language and nudity. |
| Profanity: | Extremely strong and crude language used by adults and child |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drugs, character is a recovering drug abuser |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Comic violence, fantasy battles, swords |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | November 7, 2008 |
It takes some brains to make a good dumb comedy. Paul Rudd, who has been the best thing in too many films that ranged from dumb, to awful, to wildly uneven, has co-created a film that manages to insult the intelligence of its characters without insulting the intelligence of its audience too badly.
I could have done with less emphasis on the inherent hilarity of hearing an angry little kid use bad language and make sexually precocious comments. And some of the double entendres were so nudge-nudge obvious they were closer to single and a fraction. But some good lines and sharply observed characters make it above average for its genre.
Rudd and Seann William Scott play Danny and Wheeler, who work for a company that sells a soft drink called Minotaur by visiting schools for a phony “don’t do drugs” talk that is really just a way to push their soda. Wheeler wears a Minotaur suit and Danny half-heartedly tells the kids to drink Minotaur instead of doing drugs and then they drive off in their Minotaur-obile. This is all just fine with Wheeler, a walking id who just wants to get high and have sex. But Danny once wanted more from life and when his increasing bitterness causes his lawyer girlfriend to leave him, seeing the Minotaur-obile towed away is just one indignity too many. He objects, leading to arrests, leading to community service at Sturdy Wings, a Big Brother-style place run by a former drug addict (Jane Lynch). Each is assigned a “Little.” Wheeler gets a precocious kid (Bobb’e J. Thompson) who swears all the time and accuses everyone of racism and child abuse. He is also way too fascinated with feminine anatomy, a trait they manage to bond over. And Danny gets Augie (“Superbad” McLovin’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a cape-wearing nerd whose life revolves around a Medieval-ish role-playing game
Director David Wain manages the tricky balance between having some fun with the conventions of the genre without getting mean about it. Yes, everyone learns a few lessons about self-respect and relationships (and sword-fighting) but when they do it in medieval role-playing gear inspired by a rock band, it’s a lot of fun to watch. Note, however, that a child actor’s bad language and sexual obsessions are more disturbing than funny and raise serious questions about whether the laws protecting child performers are adequate and adequately enforced.
documented the failures of the rating system but mostly focused on its secrecy and favoritism in applying the ratings to studio films over independents. Under Valenti’s successor, Dan Glickman, there have been some small improvements.
and the 
. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he created the television show 
. He became an accomplished director. One of my favorite of his films was the period heist story 
. I am also a fan of his non-fiction book 
, in part because his tireless curiosity and imagination were so engaging. His 1993 
is one of the dozen or so indispensable reference works every film fan needs. 
. He does not waste time trying to be too specific or consistent about his guidelines (okay, so “Monty Python” and “The Sopranos” are television programs, not movies, they’re still must watching) and thank goodness he does not try to rank anything. That does not mean you won’t find something to argue with. But it does mean that the arguments it sparks will be a lot of fun. Critics are cranky. But crankiness can be a lot of fun. Whether he included or dissed your favorites, it cannot be denied that every movie on his list is worth seeing and every entry in this book is worth reading.