2008 Woodie Awards
'Drillbit Taylor' sacrifices laughs for PG-13 rating
Bill Fech
Issue date: 3/24/08 Section: Features
Lately, the Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen touch has been pure comedic and box office gold.
Apatow, the current "it" guy in Hollywood, has been producing films for years, but his direction of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" put him on every raunch fan's radar.
Rogen and his improvisational style had a part in both movies, and he co-wrote the Apatow-produced "Superbad." He'll have a big hand in the upcoming stoner comedy "Pineapple Express."
Whew. That's quite the lineup. You have to imagine the law of probability will intercede soon and knock one of these guys' projects down a peg or two.
Enter "Drillbit Taylor."
Produced by Apatow and co-written by Rogen, it tells the ludicrous story of three high school freshmen who hire a bully for protection, and it represents the first major chink in its creators' comedic armor.
Owen Wilson stars as the title character, a homeless "dude" with inexplicably great make-up and golden locks. He's recruited by three dweeby students - string-bean romantic Wade (Nate Hartley), chubby rapper Ryan (Troy Gentile) and pipsqueak Emmit (David Dorfman) - to protect them from a ferocious bully named Filkins (Alex Frost).
Rogen and Apatow have long held an affinity for high school outsiders, going back all the way to their collaboration on the short-lived television series "Freaks and Geeks." Sadly, the kids here are basically cardboard cutouts of the crass nerds from "Superbad": One is overweight, one is skinny and the other is scarily eccentric. This recycling of characters isn't altogether unfunny, but it is unoriginal.
Filkins is an over-exaggerated bully, an emancipated minor who keeps a samurai sword in his car. I could be intimidating, too, if I had ancient weaponry and a drumming musical score accompanying me everywhere I went. Apparently, there are also no teachers roaming hallways in this film, as Filkins basically has free reign to terrorize the three kids in locker-stuffing, fist-fight fashion. The parents of the victimized kids don't seem to believe their children that a bully is on the prowl. This isn't a movie, it's a fantasy cartoon designed around laughs.
Drillbit lies about his military past, making himself out to be a killer bodyguard who knows his stuff. "Remember," he tells the kids, "I'll always be watching, even if you don't see me." In reality, he's ripping the kids off to pay for transportation to Canada, "where the government pays you to claim the land," for himself and his hobo compatriots (yet another touching representation of the homeless on screen).
Common movie sense tells us that Drillbit will have a crisis of conscience somewhere down the line after the kids keep getting harassed, and the film is predictable to a fault. When Drillbit goes undercover as a substitute teacher to better track his employers, it's clear the movie also has no intention of adhering to any sense of reality. (Really? Anybody who shows up at a school is left in charge of a class?)
Part of the problem is the film's rating. The movies that made Apatow were pure R-rated debauchery, but "Drillbit" tones things down to a PG-13 level of appropriateness, probably to reach a larger audience. Humor is in short order - my only guffaw came in a scene in which the kids experiment with how hard they can punch each other.
I imagine students across America will flock to this movie in hopes of seeing an anthem for resistance to bullies. They will be disappointed, not because of who comes out on top, but because the picture just isn't that fun.
I hope, for the sake of twenty-something comedies, that "Drillbit Taylor" signals only the necessary growing pains of Apatow and cohorts and not a slide into silliness. "You kids are hiring a bodyguard to take care of a high school bully?" says one of the kids' many interviewees. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Quite.
Bill Fech is a senior English and film studies major. Reach him at billfech@dailynebraskan.com.
Apatow, the current "it" guy in Hollywood, has been producing films for years, but his direction of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" put him on every raunch fan's radar.
Rogen and his improvisational style had a part in both movies, and he co-wrote the Apatow-produced "Superbad." He'll have a big hand in the upcoming stoner comedy "Pineapple Express."
Whew. That's quite the lineup. You have to imagine the law of probability will intercede soon and knock one of these guys' projects down a peg or two.
Enter "Drillbit Taylor."
Produced by Apatow and co-written by Rogen, it tells the ludicrous story of three high school freshmen who hire a bully for protection, and it represents the first major chink in its creators' comedic armor.
Owen Wilson stars as the title character, a homeless "dude" with inexplicably great make-up and golden locks. He's recruited by three dweeby students - string-bean romantic Wade (Nate Hartley), chubby rapper Ryan (Troy Gentile) and pipsqueak Emmit (David Dorfman) - to protect them from a ferocious bully named Filkins (Alex Frost).
Rogen and Apatow have long held an affinity for high school outsiders, going back all the way to their collaboration on the short-lived television series "Freaks and Geeks." Sadly, the kids here are basically cardboard cutouts of the crass nerds from "Superbad": One is overweight, one is skinny and the other is scarily eccentric. This recycling of characters isn't altogether unfunny, but it is unoriginal.
Filkins is an over-exaggerated bully, an emancipated minor who keeps a samurai sword in his car. I could be intimidating, too, if I had ancient weaponry and a drumming musical score accompanying me everywhere I went. Apparently, there are also no teachers roaming hallways in this film, as Filkins basically has free reign to terrorize the three kids in locker-stuffing, fist-fight fashion. The parents of the victimized kids don't seem to believe their children that a bully is on the prowl. This isn't a movie, it's a fantasy cartoon designed around laughs.
Drillbit lies about his military past, making himself out to be a killer bodyguard who knows his stuff. "Remember," he tells the kids, "I'll always be watching, even if you don't see me." In reality, he's ripping the kids off to pay for transportation to Canada, "where the government pays you to claim the land," for himself and his hobo compatriots (yet another touching representation of the homeless on screen).
Common movie sense tells us that Drillbit will have a crisis of conscience somewhere down the line after the kids keep getting harassed, and the film is predictable to a fault. When Drillbit goes undercover as a substitute teacher to better track his employers, it's clear the movie also has no intention of adhering to any sense of reality. (Really? Anybody who shows up at a school is left in charge of a class?)
Part of the problem is the film's rating. The movies that made Apatow were pure R-rated debauchery, but "Drillbit" tones things down to a PG-13 level of appropriateness, probably to reach a larger audience. Humor is in short order - my only guffaw came in a scene in which the kids experiment with how hard they can punch each other.
I imagine students across America will flock to this movie in hopes of seeing an anthem for resistance to bullies. They will be disappointed, not because of who comes out on top, but because the picture just isn't that fun.
I hope, for the sake of twenty-something comedies, that "Drillbit Taylor" signals only the necessary growing pains of Apatow and cohorts and not a slide into silliness. "You kids are hiring a bodyguard to take care of a high school bully?" says one of the kids' many interviewees. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Quite.
Bill Fech is a senior English and film studies major. Reach him at billfech@dailynebraskan.com.
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