Life Lessons for Losers
Heder and Thornton Square Off
The idea of taking people with no social graces and turning them into attractive men and women is a very old idea. Hollywood has played it out in musicals (My Fair Lady), romantic comedies (Pretty Woman), and teen movies (She's All That). So, it's only fair to warn that School for Scoundrels covers some very familiar territory. The only thing this film has going for it is the fact that the teacher is Billy Bob Thornton, and he's more interested in producing a lion than a show horse.
Written by: Todd Phillips & Scot Armstrong
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Heder, Jacinda Barrett, Matt Walsh, Horatio Sanz, Todd Louiso, and Michael Clarke Duncan
Rated
(for
for language, crude and sexual content, and some violence)Running time: 100 min.
FilmGuru's Rating : 4 out of 10.
Jon Heder plays Roger, a socially inept young man who finds his world falling apart. He has trouble talking to girls, he's been robbed on the job, and he just got rejected by the Big Brother program (again). Luckily for Roger, there's someone who can help.
School for Scoundrels is essentially Pygmalion for idiots. Instead of taking someone with no social skills and refining him/her, Dr. P (Thornton) teaches the average milquetoast how to stand out by being an overbearing macho idiot. He teaches his students to "Be Dangerous, It's Cool" and "Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More." Sadly, it works all too well.
The comedy comes from physical gags for the most part. People are hit in the privates, sprayed with tear gas, and (in Roger's case) faint with regularity. The best moments in the film come from the absurdity of the class, which quickly runs its course. Instead of focusing on the outrageous classroom antics, the story turns into a predictable rivalry. Seeing a challenge, Dr. P competes with Roger for the affection of Amanda (Jacinda Barrett).
Thornton has proven his acting chops over the years, so it seems a waste to see him in a role that could have been filled by any typecast heavy. Being bad is easy, especially when the character is as one-dimensional as Dr. P.
Heder, at best, plays a good loser. His character of Roger is in many ways like the Napoleon Dynamite character that gave him national attention. His vacant stare and slow speech seem to peg Roger as a rider of the short bus. As Roger matures, Heder begins to show some real charisma. Too bad it only gets a relatively short amount of screen time. I'd like to see him in a comedy role that didn't rely on him being social dysfunctional.
The film has a few nice guest appearances, including Ben Stiller as a former student of Dr. P. Comedian Sarah Silverman appears as Amanda's roommate Becky. David Cross plays Roger's friend Ian.
To my disappointment, many of the funniest moments were wasted in the previews. This trend has prevailed for years in Hollywood, and once again the marketing folks have managed to find the only gems in the film and use them to sucker audiences to see a film that is void of much else.
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