Role Models (2008)

After ten years as a energy drink spokesman for Minotaur, Danny (Paul Rudd) is finally getting fed up with his mundane life. While he has a stable job, a beautiful girlfriend and a decent life, he doesn't seem to realize it and he cracks.

Certain antics ensue leading Danny and his partner in crime Wheeler (Seann William Scott) to find themselves faced with 150 hours of community service or 30 days in jail. But community service turns out to be no walk in the park, they're not forced to clean the highways but instead forced to babysit two dysfunctional kids who are apart of a Big Brother type program known as Sturdy Wings. If they screw this up they could find themselves in prison, and for longer than the original 30 days.

Role Models is a film that will have you laughing your head off one minute, and scratching it the next. For me there's a love / hate relationship with the film. I loved the whole Danny storyline of his life crashing down on him, breaking up with his girlfriend, and hanging out with the king of all nerds Augie Farks who spends a majority of his free time hanging out in the park role playing with a bunch of other grown up nerds. Then there's the Wheeler storyline which consists of "boobies" and his eleven year old "little" who can't say a word without cussing up a storm, this got old fast and was rarely ever funny. Throw in the dysfunctional founder of Sturdy Wings, Gayle Sweeny, who was more strange than amusing and you've got a film that managed to entertain me 50% of the time.

While dysfunctional and crude comedies seem to be all the rage and come flowing from the orifice of Hollywood's top comedy writers, that doesn't mean what you're getting is high quality comedy. Hollywood has substituted that for scripts made up of mostly of four letter words and sex jokes, because they realized that the viewing public will pay to see anything no matter how low quality it may be. What other reason is there for the writers of Scary Movie continue to crank out the awful spoofs film that everyone hates yet still goes to see? Seriously, what's more funny than an eleven year old kid who can't complete a sentence without dispersing two to three obscenities, and in the process completely out cusses everyone else in the film? I don't know what to be more shocked at, that people actually found it amusing or this kid's parents actually allowed him to do a film where more than half his lines are curse words! Money over morals I guess.

Overall, Role Models will find it's success with the fans of Superbad, Knocked Up, and various other imitations of this mutated genre, but it's not totally devoid of entertainment for those of us actually looking for smart comedy, you just have to weed through the sludge. Thankfully the film ends on a high note and the final 20-30 minutes of the film is actually quite well done and entertaining focusing on Daniel and his friendship with Augie. In the end, I can't say I'd completely recommend Role Models because the bad vs the good almost cancel this film out altogether. It's really quite a shame because a cleaned up version could have been a very successful family friendly comedy, that probably would have been funnier.

5/10