An average movie is almost worse to review than a bad movie. When telling friends about a bad movie, you can make exaggerated comments like, "I was so bored during that movie that I read The State Press."
This is why I grudgingly rate "School For Scoundrels" as being just average. It is like the PG "Napoleon Dynamite" and R-rated "Bad Santa" had sex to make a tamed, though decent, PG-13 lovechild.
Roger (Jon Heder) is a dork who never sticks up for himself and wears pajamas with penguins on them. Then, one day, salvation comes in the form of a $5,000 confidence-building class taught by Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton).
Dr. P, having a degree in "Anger Management" and "Fight Club," knows the only way to make people like Roger change their lives is by putting them in wacky situations.
Roger and his classmates are schooled into confronting random people with hostility, shooting each other with paintballs and lying to women in order to "become lions" rather than the prey they have lived as.
Things go increasingly well until, dun-dun-dun-dun, Roger finds that the girl next door (Jacinda Barrett) he was going for is now being pursued by Dr. P, because the teacher believes the quick-learning Roger is a threat to his ego. Movie logic kicks in and the pair must now try to one-up each other until the film reaches an abrupt conclusion.
So if by chance you have not seen the trailer yet, I've spoiled most of the movie for you.
In fairness, the cast does not have to strive for originality to be funny. Heder is a likable guy that can entertain simply by doing his slack-jawed "Napoleon" expression.
Thornton, as his usual scruffy jerk character, brings the on-cue laughs too. Ben Stiller even hops onboard for yet another eccentric cameo as "Ben Stiller with long hair and a mustache."
The problem is the familiarity of it all - it has been done before, literally.
"Scoundrels" is a remake of a 1960 British film with the same name. It also looks like they'll be doing it yet again in 2007, with Seann William Scott fighting to keep his mother from marrying bad guy Thornton in "Mr. Woodcock."
Hopefully by then we'll have an unrated DVD of "Jackass: Number Two" to rent instead.
Reach the reporter at: michael.chichester@asu.edu.
