Movie-Holic

Role Models is not exactly bad, but it’s not exactly good either. Caught at a crossroads between raunchy and acceptable, Role Models tries to deliver and make you laugh.

The story is ok as far a slacker comedy goes. Two guys, Danny and Wheeler (played by Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott), work as a team of energy drink salesmen who travel to different schools and do anti-drug presentations in order to steer the impressionable teens towards their ‘Minotaur’ energy drink. They get into trouble and are sentenced to serving 150 hours as ‘bigs’ to a couple of ‘littles’ at a Big Brothers like organization that pairs up kids with people who will spend time with them. During this 150 hours you have the usual banter, useless comedic moments, sex, ups and downs, and eventually a heart warming ending.

The usual slacker comedy type of story.

And I would have been fine with this type of storyline, even including the real life medieval role-playing angle, but…

When you have a movie with the comedic likes of both Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott you just expect more. I was really looking for another Stiffler type performance from Scott and Rudd is, most of the time, pretty solid as far as a comedic side-kick is concerned. The thing is, they just didn’t deliver.

Scott seemed to try and be too grown up so his jokes and raunchy behavior came off as forced and uncomfortable. Rudd was just plain boring. That may have been his character, but it was a little bit nauseating.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any highlights to the movie. There are some pretty good laugh-to-yourself type moments (I didn’t once laugh out loud) and a few of those “What the _________!” type areas where they just pull something out of thin air that you’re not expecting.

The director of the “Sturdi Wings” organization that Danny and Wheeler are sentenced to serve their community service hours, played by Jane Lynch, is also one of those bright spots. She is quite disturbed and, while I didn’t like her at the beginning, she did grow on you and had a few of those laugh-to-yourself moments.

Role Models definitely deserves its R rating for the language. I don’t know about little kids swearing worse than the adult actors, and there are some scenes of nudity. Definitely not one for the young ones.

Role Models Final Conclusion

As I said, the movie isn’t bad enough to not like, nor is it good enough to really like. Movies like American Pie, Superbad, and Clerks are much better as far as this type of comedy is concerned. I said in this post I was really expecting a lot of laugh out loud moments, but was disappointed when that didn’t happen.

I did like it. I just didn’t love it. If you are a fan of this type of movie, useless, slacker comedy, then Role Models is something you’re going to want to see. If you’re already borderline for these types of movies, then you might want to skip this one.