Role Models

"My father was a traveling salesman. My mother, out of necessity, was a whore."

To some degree, I’m tempted to just point you to my review of Zack and Miri Make a Porno from last week. I fear I may repeat myself. Role Models continues the trend of R-rated comedies mixing serious don’t-bring-grandma vulgarity with totally unironic, all-stops-out sweetness and sentimentality. Role Models isn’t quite as dirty as Zack and Miri, but it’s at least as earnest and manipulative. And again the mix is jarring, uneasy, unconvincing.

It’s not that it can’t be done. After all, the Apatow surge is built on the concept of giving very R-rated material a softer edge. It’s that it takes more skill than either Kevin Smith or Role Models director David Wain (the man behind cult hit Wet Hot American Summer and cult curiosity The Ten) can muster. Team Apatow’s genius, I think, is that they rarely indulge in broad comic “set pieces” — the raunch seems, somehow, to arise organically from the story. And so it seems better integrated into their gentle plots. Role Models instead toggles modes — from mean to sweet, from hyper-ironic to cloyingly sincere. At its core, the film is about a man learning to move past his cynicism, so I suppose one could justify the spasmodic tone that way. But it doesn’t make for a smooth viewing experience. The last fifteen minutes could have come from a children’s film.

What more or less pulls us through, here as in Zack and Miri, are the people. Role Models is full of spectacularly funny individuals — actors you want to spend time with. If I told you this was a movie about two overgrown frat boys who are forced to mentor two misfit kids, your eyes would start to glaze over. If I added that the overgrown frat boys are played by Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd, you might think twice. Also on hand are the inimitable Jane Lynch in top non sequitur form, Superbad‘s Christopher Mintz-Plasse as one of the unfortunate mentees, and Elizabeth Banks, bringing effortless charm to one of her more straightforward roles as The Girlfriend.

One problem is that the film is peculiarly distractable. At one point, in depicting Mintz-Plasse’s Augie as a hopeless nerd, it hits upon the notion that he enjoys Live Action Role Playing — dressing up in costumes, taking up plastic swords, and enacting fantasy scenarios. The amount of time it subsequently spends on this is staggering. The protracted climax is one long role play, as the film operates on the mistaken assumption that we care about the game’s substantive outcome. We care, to some degree, about whether Rudd’s jaded, too-cool-for-the-room Danny swallows his pride and comes to Augie’s aid, and whether Augie can summon the courage to start a conversation with the only pretty role-playing girl in the state. But that doesn’t mean we want to watch fifteen minutes of fake swordfighting. What an odd move.

The movie spends so much time screwing around that when it ultimately hits us with an onslaught of conventional sentimentality, the effect is bewildering. Big emotional payoffs have to be set up; they can’t just materialize out of thin air. The ending — the whole third act, really — pushes so hard that I’m convinced the studio had a hand in it.

Still, funny is funny, and Role Models does offer plenty. Rudd’s nasty tirade to an unassuming barista about the absurdity of insisting on “venti” instead of “large” is hilarious because it’s true — and because Rudd delivers it with such righteous conviction. Jane Lynch’s speech about her old eating habits (mostly she ate cocaine) is another highlight. Christopher Mintz-Plasse mostly has one note, but it’s a good one. There are a lot of laughs. Maybe the movie should have contented itself with that.

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2008
Starring:	Bobb'e J. Thompson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Rudd, Jane Lynch, Seann William Scott
Directed by:	David Wain
Rated:	R