School for Scoundrels

There are some actors who can brighten up even the worst movies with just their presence alone. (Billy Bob Thornton) And then there are some actors who's mere presence can just about sink a film. (Jon Heder) Put these two actors together in the lead starring roles, and you're bound to get a very strange movie. Such is the case with School for Scoundrels, a movie that tries to be too many things, and as a result, works only in bits and pieces. This is a movie that feels like its been tampered with in some way, like it has edited and re-edited time and time again in order to please a test audience that wasn't happy with an earlier cut, or perhaps a studio head who thought the movie needed more heart or likeable characters. A movie called School for Scoundrels shouldn't have heart or likeable characters. Too bad nobody bothered to inform that to director and co-writer, Todd Phillips (Old School, Starsky & Hutch).

One-note character actor, Jon Heder, plays Roger, a down on his luck loser who gets no respect on his job, where he works as a New York meter maid, or in life. He's the kind of guy whose apartment is filled with self help books, but he seems to be going nowhere fast, especially in the department of confessing his true feelings to the sweet young girl who lives in the apartment down the hall from him, Amanda (Jacinda Barrett from The Last Kiss). A friend gives Roger a mysterious phone number, and tells him only to call it, as it can change his life. The number that Roger dials connects him to a man who calls himself Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton), who runs a rather unorthodox confidence-building course for men who want to change their lives. Dr. P's course teaches Roger and the other students to be aggressive, be confrontational, and most of all, lie in order to get what you want. Through the course, Roger finds inner strength that he never knew existed before, and he even brings up the courage to ask Amanda out for a date. But when Dr. P starts moving in on his territory and tries to woo Amanda for himself, the gloves come off, and a bitter war begins between Teacher and Student. Dr. P resorts to planting evidence to try to convince Amanda that Roger is an obsessed psycho, while Roger teams up with some of his fellow students and a former disgruntled student of Dr. P's with a score to settle (Ben Stiller) in order to bring the man down and expose him for the fraud he is.

For a movie littered with as many problems as School for Scoundrels, it's somewhat hard to pinpoint just exactly where the film and the screenplay by Todd Phillips and Scot Armstrong goes wrong. The film definitely suffers from an identity crisis, as it starts out as a raunchy male-driven comedy, turns into a sappy romantic comedy during the middle portion, switches gears to become a dark revenge comedy, and then goes right back to romantic comedy territory with one of the oldest cliches in the genre book (the hero desperately racing through the airport trying to stop his girl from going off with the wrong man). But really, I think the film's central problem is that the movie seems like it follows the inspiration of the meek Roger character, rather than the aggressive and cunning Dr. P. The movie is far too tame, and doesn't do enough with its own premise. There is a hilarious montage early in the film where Roger and his fellow students must pick a confrontation with random people on the street as part of their training to become "real men". Therefore, the guys pick fights with harmless people on the street, and bed-ridden old ladies in hospitals. The film hits the right notes during these moments, and this is the direction the film should have taken. Unfortunately, Phillips and Armstrong wimp out immediately afterward, and the movie begins a downward spiral from which it never fully recovers. After a promising opening half that is daring and somewhat dark, the film suddenly turns into a cliched romantic comedy as Roger tries to win Amanda's heart. Even when the film tries to recapture the twisted and funny tone of the first part, it fails because it simply loses its edge. Roger and Dr. P simply become involved in lame slapstick fights, and the tone turns from smart and satirical to flat-out stupid. You can almost pinpoint when the movie starts to go wrong, and that's when it stops focusing its attention on Dr. P's class, and more on Roger's personal life and his rivalry with his teacher.

With so much strong comedic talent on display, you'd think someone involved must have known that the movie was taking a wrong turn, especially when it refuses to use their comic talents for its own use, or stuffs them in small, forgettable roles that have nothing to do with the plot. A good example is Ben Stiller, who shows up late in the film as a crazed former student of Dr. P. He shared a similar rivalry with the teacher that Roger is going through, lost, and now spends his days holed up in a run down house surrounded by hundreds of cats. The character and the idea is funny, but the movie gives Stiller nothing funny to do, so you almost wonder why he even bothered to show up. Controversial comic Sarah Silverman is also wasted in a pointless role as Amanda's roommate. Seeing as though she serves no purpose to the story, other than to be yet another person to ridicule Roger throughout, we realize she's just here for the paycheck rather than actually contributing to the film. Honestly, the movie seems to forget about everyone except its three main leads as it goes on. The film ends with an extended epilogue sequence explaining what happened to the characters afterward, and since we barely know most of the characters on display, the jokes during this sequence fall completely flat. You get the sense that if Heder, Thornton, and Barrett were the only actors present in this film, and the rest of the cast was made up out of cardboard cutouts, no one would seriously notice.

At the very least, School for Scoundrels offers another successful comedic performance by Billy Bob Thornton. Yes, he's pretty much playing the same "guy you love to hate" character he's played before in past comedies like Bad Santa and The Ice Harvest, but he still finds a way to make his performance seem fresh and funny. The classroom scenes where he is coaching his students on the different aspects of being a "man" generate some of the biggest laughs in the film, so it's almost a shame when the movie decides to take him out of the school, and he starts interfering with Roger's life. The classroom is all but forgotten about from this point on, and his character just isn't as funny as he was before. Jon Heder continues to drag out the 15-minutes of fame he received for Napoleon Dynamite with yet another nearly indentical performance, although this time he does at least try to make Roger a bit more well rounded of a character. He's a bit more human than some of Heder's past "nerd" performances, but he still seems to fall back on the same old acting tricks that I have long grown tired of. Jacinda Barrett is basically forced to fill in the sweet and bland center that drives the rivalry between the male leads. I know she's capable of much more, especially after seeing The Last Kiss just weeks ago.

As I mentioned before, School for Scoundrels is definitely a strange little movie. It's light-hearted and sweet, when it should be sharp and biting. And when it tries to be sharp, the humor isn't always smart enough. After a fairly strong first half, the movie slips into cliches and half-baked ideas, almost sending the viewer into a depressed state as they watch the promise it once held slip away. Maybe the script needed another rewrite or two. Or maybe the film was tampered with too much in a failed effort to make it a crowd pleaser. All I know is that all I learned from this School is how to waste some good comic talent and some good ideas.

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