Cynical Cinema

Romantic comedies are one of those genres that make me cringe just thinking about them.  They often involve Hugh Grant or Meg Ryan and some crying.  There is always some major event or misunderstanding that takes place twenty-one minutes before the end of the film that shakes the foundation of the relationship we’re watching, and of course it gets resolved within that 21 minutes and everyone lives happily ever after.  And girls laugh, and then cry, and then laugh again as they watch.  And I usually curl up in a ball and try to suppress my rage.  This time, however, this was not the case. 

With Forgetting Sarah Marshall, my girlfriend did indeed laugh and cry.  But that was because she laughed until she cried.  And her sides hurt.  And mine too.  This movie is absolutely hilarious.  Judd Apatow (of Knocked Up and 40-Year-Old Virgin fame) produced this film, directed by Nick Stoller.  It stars Jason Segal as Peter, a guy who does the music for one of those CSI-type crime shows.  You know, the guy who plays the intense, moody music when David Caruso takes off his sunglasses?  He is dating Sarah Marshall, the star of that crime scene show.  Until, two minutes into the movie, she breaks up with him, leading to perhaps the funniest nude scene I have ever seen in a movie.  You see, he figures she can’t really break up with him until he puts clothes on to have a conversation.  So he just won’t put clothes on.  (Yes, it IS full-frontal male nudity, the best kind of comedic nudity!)

Then, with help from his not-terribly-helpful step-brother, Peter decides to go on vacation in order to get his mind off Sarah, and of course manages to end up at the exact same resort she does.  Sarah is there with her brand new boyfriend Elvis Snow, a huge international rock star played to perfection by the absolutely hilarious Russell Brand.  While Elvis is now Peter’s biggest rival for the affections of Sarah, and Peter should by all reasonable logic feel some resentment toward him, he ends up kind of liking him.  And so do we.  Brand plays Snow as such an un-self-conscious doofus of a rock star, that it is impossible to make him into the villain of the piece.  In fact, there really isn’t much of a villain at all, unless it’s Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) herself.

The supporting cast is amazing too, including Paul Rudd as a perma-stoned surfing instructor, John Hill as a waiter with a rather unhealthy obsession with Elvis Snow, and several gigantic men who serve as comedic relief in dozens of scenes.  The one scene here that I think perfectly exemplifies the reason this movie is so great is the scene where one of these gigantic Hawaiiam men recruits Peter to help him prepare the pig for dinner.  And Peter has to actually kill the pig.  In so many other movies, this scene would have lasted nine minutes.  And it would have squeezed every bit of comedy it possibly could out of the “he has to stab the pig and he hates it” joke.  But in this movie, the scene lasts maybe twenty seconds.  There is probably only twenty seconds of real, true hilarity to be derived from a scene such as this one, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall makes absolutely sure that those twenty seconds are the only ones we see.  It’s a remarkable demonstration of restraint in a 2008 R-rated romantic comedy.

And then there’s Mila Kunis.  Jackie from That 70s Show is a revelation in her role as the desk clerk at the Hawaiian hotel where Peter and Sarah and Elvis are staying.  And it’s pretty clear early on that she will become the catalyst for Peter to either get over his ex-girlfriend or break down completely.  The chemistry between Kunis and Segel is magnificent, and she is incredibly charming.  To the point that we, the audience, immediately root for her, no matter what her role will be in this movie.  Watching her face while Peter performs a song he wrote for a Dracula-themed puppet-show musical is just awesome.  Hilarious and charming and brilliant.  Just like this movie.

First off, I want to say that Pineapple Express is the worst movie made by the combination of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen.  That being said, it is still better than most other comedies in the world.  And just because it doesn’t live up to the promise of Superbad and 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.  Because it is.  It is funny.  And it is good. 

Normally, I don’t much like stoner movies.  With the possible exception of Half Baked.  The problem I have with these movies is that they assume the people watching are in on the joke.  Like there’s some kind of giant stoner culture in the world where everyone listens to the same music, watches the same movies and TV shows, and knows all the same jokes.  They have the same vocabulary - reefer, bong, hydro, roach, so on and so forth.  And because I’m watching the movie, they assume I too am a part of this club.  And I’m not.  I don’t want to be a part of this club.  I don’t like this vocabulary.  I don’t like the word “Bogart” being thrown at me by some pothead as though it’s a secret word only him, me, and nine hundred thousand other useless potheads know.

Pineapple Express is different.  Seth Rogen stars as a weed-smoking process server.  His job is to dress up in different disguises in order to get close to people and serve them with legal papers.  James Franco stars as his weed dealer, a total burnout desperate for a friend.  After Rogen witnesses a murder, he and Franco are sent on a crazy flight all over the city, looking for some people and hiding from others.  Originally, the two characters were the opposite.  Franco was cast as the uptight process server and Rogen was to be the laid-back burnout dealer.  Which would have been ideal casting, one would think.  But somehow, along the way, the roles got switched.  And they decided to have Rogen play the guy with the job and the suit and the tie and the girlfriend, and pretty-boy James Franco became the dope smoking burnout.  And it works.  I can only assume it works even better than it would have the other way around.

Franco plays a character as far removed from Harry Osbourne in Spiderman as is possible.  And Rogen is fantastic, as usual.  The chemistry between the two is incredible, and the dialogue is great.  It appears to be dialogue that Rogen and Apatow can write in their sleep, but that is still better than anything this side of Kevin Smith.  The scene at the end, where Rogen, Franco and their dealer buddy Danny McBride are sitting around in a restaurant rehashing the events of the movie is absolutely hilarious.  And the opening scene, where Bill Hader is a test subject in a military experiment with marijuana is priceless. 

After that, the movie is haphazard, and there are moments that are hit-and-miss.  But the spirit of the film is endearing and fun.  The scenes where the two main characters try to do things they’ve seen in action movies, with real life results, are terrific.  Franco tries to kick the window out of a police car, but succeeds only in putting his foot through the windshield, where it gets stuck.  And the car chase ensues, with his foot hanging out of the window in front of him, and we all laugh.  Because it’s real and it’s funny.  And so is the rest of this movie.  Check out Pineapple Express.  You don’t have to be a stoner to like it.  Which is why it’s a good stoner movie.

Seth Rogen was clearly the fat kid in high school. The funny fat kid, mind you, but also the one who was picked on a little. Which is why, in every movie he writes, the fat kid gets all the best lines. It worked amazingly well in Superbad with Jonah Hill, and it works almost as well in Drillbit Taylor, out tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment. The fat kid in Drillbit Taylor is played by Troy Gentile, who is almost as good as Hill in Superbad. It’s too bad the rest of the film doesn’t live up to that promise.

Because really, Drillbit Taylor is nothing but a “prequel” to Superbad. The same characters are there - the geeky best friends, one fat one mild-mannered and skinny. Their third friend who is far geekier than either. And the fat kid is still actively trying to get rid of the even-nerdier kid, because he will bring them down in the eyes of the “cool kids”. So - the kids from Superbad, four years earlier. Seth Rogen co-wrote the script for this film with Kristofor Brown, and Judd Apatow produced the movie, so the pieces were in place to make something on the level of Superbad, if not Knocked Up or 40 Year Old Virgin. But…this movie sucks.

It’s not Owen Wilson’s fault. He plays his standard, overly-sincere loser character. But the movie isn’t written to fit his style, his style isn’t adjusted to fit the movie, and he feels miscast because every scene he’s in is worse than every scene where it’s just the kids on their own. And Wilson is in almost every scene. He plays a homeless man who poses as a bodyguard to get hired by some kids to protect them from the high school bully. In order to do this, he poses as a substitute teacher at the school. Making him a homeless guy posing as a bodyguard posing as a teacher. Why is he homeless? He doesn’t have a substance abuse problem or a mental problem. And he seems to be more than willing to work for money - in fact, he’s going WAY out of his way to fake his way into this job…it doesn’t make sense.

Also fairly strange is the school bully. I don’t remember school having bullies like this, ever. Bullying in schools usually involved the threat of force and the teasing and the shoving, but never punching kids and beating them and attacking them on a daily basis. These bullies are implausible, but then if they weren’t so mean and violent, the little kids wouldn’t need a bodyguard. I guess. And the young kids are bullied their first day of school in grade nine by some kids who are 18 years old and clearly, at least, in grade twelve. So…how come they’re in the same classes? Are we to believe that the bullies have failed every single year they’ve spent in high school? Or just that nobody bothered to think that through?

In the end, these are the minor problems with Drillbit Taylor. The major problem, amazingly enough, is the script. Other than some truly memorable lines from Troy Gentile, there is nothing funny about the rest of the movie. At all. Owen Wilson is not funny. His character is not funny. His sexual conquest of another teacher at the school is not funny. The other two kids are not funny. The bully is not funny. And the concept, while kind of interesting on the surface, is never explored at all. This ends up being exactly like every other overcoming a high school bully movie, and might actually be the most predictable movie in years. The second we meet Owen Wilson, as Drillbit Taylor, we know exactly what will happen, in every scene, for the entire rest of the movie.

Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow have managed to turn standard movie arcs and plots into true gold. Superbad was so funny and smart that you forgot very fast that you had seen this exact movie many times before. Just never that funny. Knocked Up was a movie many others have made in the past - but writing it from the guy’s perspective was something the fifty-five movies like it had never thought to do. And it was so funny and smart that you forgot you’d seen it before. But Drillbit Taylor is not one of these movies.

I think the success of their oeuvre has made Apatow and Rogen such sought-after commodities that studios and producers will purchase absolutely anything they do. And if that includes a throwaway script that they wrote in high school and never edited and forgot about for fifteen years, then so be it. Which is, I think, what happened in the case of Drillbit Taylor. This movie is a total waste of time.