It’s no fun kicking a guy when he’s down, not in movies or movie reviews, yet here we are with Drillbit Taylor, a movie in which every character is just asking for a good punt. The kicking victims of the movie are three nerdy youngsters who know no better than most movie nerds and are besieged by one of the most sadistic bullies to ever punch his way out of the womb.
The victim of my review is Owen Wilson, a usually funny guy who has fallen on hard times in the last seven months. I take no great pleasure in suggesting his shtick is getting a wee-bit old and that maybe a reinvention is in order. Let’s just hope his publicist shields him from what is sure to be a wave of bad reviews for this, his atrocious new movie. Before I start really kicking Wilson, let me divert: Drillbit Taylor is an uncomfortably cruel comedy. Its main bully, a psychologically deranged young man named Filkins, is such a convincing miscreant that the over-the-top torment he rains down on teens much smaller and younger than himself is never funny, just ugly and hopeless. He’s so vile that the film doesn’t even give him parents: “He’s an emancipated minor, so really there’s nothing I can do to him,” the principal, a gutless wanderer of a school administrator, says to the boys who suffer under Filkins’ rule.
Filkins not only humiliates his freshman prey, but punches them viciously, runs them down with his car, and at one point uses their own bodily functions against them. He does it all with this mad snarl that is a felony in itself. As his harassments grow more severe I immediately thought back to Matilda, Danny DeVito’s lovable family film with a school administrator named Mrs. Trunchbull, who was vile in a comic non-threatening way. She had a closet with spikes, but the movie never suggested it could actually hurt anyone. Filkins is one step away from a capital crime, or a spree shooting, and the routine is not so cute. He torments best friends Ryan and Wade. Ryan (Troy Gentile) is short and fat, and looks like a younger version of Seth Rogen (one of the film’s writers), and Wade (Nate Hartley) is tall and built like a wire coathanger. They’re nerdy and runtish, freshmen to boot, but their big mistake comes when they accidentally wear matching shirts on the first day of school, thus drawing Filkins’ wrath. Later they’re joined by Emmit, another runt who looks too small not only for high school but also middle school. Together they attempt to function at school in absolute terror.
Hartley and Gentile, who are either blessed with some genuine comic timing or a terrific editor on Drillbit, can be appreciated for the spunk they share during their tumultuous high school experience. Underneath their fear and hatred for Filkins you can tell these are funny kids, if only the movie would let them show it off more. Gentile reminded me fondly of the little boy from Bad Santa. He has a great scene where he fights Filkins in an 8 Mile-style battle rap on the school steps. The chubby little tyke not only performs well, but wins, which of course draws harder punches later in the afternoon — “I guess rap really does promote violence,” Emmit chirps.
Tired of abuse, the boys pool their lunch money together to hire a private security guard. Guess what $83 buys? Not P. Diddy’s bodyguard, that’s for sure. Drillbit Taylor (Wilson) presents himself as a former Army Ranger, ex-special-ops recon paratrooper … something or other. Truth is he’s homeless and panhandles on Santa Monica Boulevard. The boys don’t know this and hire him. Drillbit sees it as a step up and begins swiping stuff from their houses when they’re at school.
Oh and then there’s a formula: Drillbit lies and lies and lies and then the lies catch up with him at the end. He loses his friends, his girl and then the cops want to arrest him. By this point, there’s a party where the boys are set for a showdown with Filkins, who is winning until … I’ll let you guess the end. At this point, though, if Filkins isn’t tortured and/or murdered brutally you’re going to be upset with anything less. You’ll hate him so much it should be a testament to Alex Frost’s acting, but then again he plays psycho a little too well. As for Wilson, he plays idiot a little too well. Even worse, he’s on auto-pilot throughout Drillbit Taylor. At one point he seems to have nothing else to do or say so everyone takes turns hitting him in the face, which materializes into nothing. With all the punching, Filkins’ rage and then Drillbit’s kiddy-robbing scheme and all you get is a cruel, baseless comedy with no heart and soul. It reminds me of that Adam Sandler movie where the Sandler character has nothing meaningful to say so he goes to Central Park and throws sticks in front of the in-line skaters to watch them fall so he can laugh and point.
I guess I should be glad he didn’t kick them after that.
What a sport
Squeaky-voiced cupcake Leslie Mann is no amateur when it comes to comedy. Her moderate-sized résumé includes several hits (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) and several bombs (Stealing Harvard, The Cable Guy) and then several pictures that fall somewhere in between the two (Orange County, Big Daddy). She’s cute as a button in Drillbit Taylor, where she plays a high school English teacher who falls for a homeless guy pretending to be a body guard and substitute teacher. The movie rushes her into a sexual encounter so quickly and with such ease — “English, that’s my native tongue,” is apparently all it takes to get in her panties — that she comes off as a desperate slut, but Mann holds her dignity high even as Drillbit switches gears amid the 5th and 6th period classroom sexcapades to incorporate her sweet teacher character as something more than a kinky chalk-toting vixen.
In no way is this a bad review of Mann, who has, yet again, sweetened up a miserably written character. Maybe it's just a plea for a starring role out there with her name on it.
