Role Models (2008)

Well, it looks like David Wain and Ken Marino have made another movie! And Paul Rudd is there (again)! Awesome! So Role Models is the tale of two dudes who work for an energy drink company, going around giving speeches to school children about how to avoid drugs by drinking more sugar water. Wheeler (Sean William Scott) digs dressing up like a giant minotaur, sleeping with lots of women, and palin' around with Danny (Paul Rudd), a devilishly handsome cynic who hates his job as he hates most things. Eventually his inability to be happy leads to being dumped by lawyer and long-term girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks). In a hopeless rage he crashes the Minotaur truck (with Wheeler inside) into a statue and to avoid jail they must do community service time in a Big Brother program run by former drug addict Gayle (Jane Lynch). Wheeler is paired with young, foulmouthed, ornery Ronnie (Bobb'e J Thompson), and Danny gets teenage medieval LARP-fan Augie (Christopher Mintze-Plasse). At first they clash, but eventually learn to enjoy each other's company as they get to know each other better, and some fun (and funny) times are had. Then there are more problems, and ultimately an epic battle (literally) of a resolution. And some people make out.

Yeah, so I thought this movie was really funny! I have read some reviews calling it unoriginal or a tired set up, but I have never seen anything with this specific concept before. I liked the idea of combining the dude-best-friends with loser-mentoring-unfortunate child formulas: kids interacting with immature, poorly-prepared adults to create a comedy for similarly-minded adults. It had some good writing (it better have after like 4 rewrites, including contributions from Paul Rudd in his first big screen writing credit), and a fabulous cast. Every few minutes my cohort and I were elbowing each other as we recognized people from The State (AD Miles! Kerri Kenney! Joe Lo Truglio [in the most fun role]! KEN MARINO!). David Wain himself even made an appearance. Elizabeth Banks was rather short-changed, but I don't think anyone is walking into this movie expecting her to have a lot of screen time. At least it is immediately apparent that she is the smart one. Also she's lookin' sharp in lawyer suits. Anyway it's got a lot of unexpected hilarious parts, as well as some missed marks. It's not the most original thing, and some of the jokes are stale, but I don't think that hindered the overall effect of the movie. I walked out of it feeling good.

4/5