November 29, 2008

Role Models (2008)

4/5

Role Models stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as Danny and Wheeler, two advertisers for Minotaur energy drink. Danny hates every new trend and saying and he picks fights with everyone who uses them. He's in a rut, and when he tries to shake things up with an impromptu and rather lame proposal to his girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks), she dumps him. In a fit of anger, he does some highly illegal things in the Minotaur truck with Wheeler, and they both get sentenced to do community service with the Sturdy Wings mentoring program as punishment. The rest of the movie is the expected, predictable journey of maturation and development that Danny and Wheeler undergo, with the requisite melodramatic loss of trust and triumphant winning back of love.

Still, the movie manages to impress. The humor starts off a little subdued, but quickly builds with incessant, nearly ubiquitous sexual innuendo and laugh-out-loud situations. The writing is phenomenal, throwing in little jokes and asides that give the movie flair and individuality and ensuring you quote it long after its ending. There are no major complaints I have from a technical standpoint. The one thing I didn't like was the two bits of nudity in the movie; they were completely unnecessary, thrown in for seemingly no other reason than because they already had an R rating for language and figured they might as well get more bang for their buck, literally. At the very least, the use of nudity wasn't distasteful or overindulgent, so for that I'm thankful. Anyway, I have only very minor complaints with this altogether enjoyable and entertaining movie experience.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430922/