Remember back in high school when the freshmen were submitted to orientation? Several kids would succumb to the will of upperclassmen, forced to perform humiliating tasks or undergo unwarranted punishment. Now imagine if they had an ex-marine that looked a lot like Owen Wilson to protect them, and you get Drillbit Taylor, a comedy that aspires to be more adult than it actually is, much like freshmen.
Drillbit Taylor follows the exploits of Ryan and Wade on their first weeks of high school. Within minutes of their first day, they find themselves in the crosshairs of two senior bullies. After a couple weeks of torture at the hands of these two teenage terrors, the freshman duo decides to hire a body guard. After a series of interviews with guards vastly outside their price range, they meet Drillbit Taylor.
Drillbit, played by Owen Wilson, isn’t your normal body guard. He’s a homeless ex-marine who lives in a tent somewhere in the forests surrounding urban California. He cleans himself using a beach shower next to a highway, finds his meals on leftover plates at cafés and dreams of living in northern Canada. Unfortunately for the kids, they don’t know any of this, so they hire him as their body guard for $375 a week.
The movie plays like a PG-13 prequel to Superbad, which isn’t that surprising since Seth Rogan had a hand in writing both movies. However, there aren’t any raunchy conversations, phallace-drawing eight-year-olds or quests to deliver alcohol to an underage party in this movie. Instead, you get a group of youngsters with very little personality. One of them freestyle raps, and the other is obsessed with a girl. That’s about as deep as their characters get.
Owen Wilson does a great job at holding the movie together. He’s fun, light and perfectly cast. His character gets the lion’s share of the personality in the movie, facing the dilemma of helping the kids, or robbing them and heading up to the great north. We also learn more about his past in the Army. Also worth mentioning is Leslie Mann of Knocked Up, who is good, given her 2-dimensional role of the swooning teacher and love interest for Wilson.
While I applaud the fact that they didn’t cast 20-year-olds to play the two freshmen, I couldn’t get past the fact that the stars of the movie look so young. To the kids’ credit, they do fine. They are just no Michael Cera and Jonah Hill.
Not helping things is the dialogue, which is more often flat than funny. Wilson is given a handful of one-liners, none of which are really worth mentioning. Every now and then something will come along and make you laugh a bit, but for the most part it’s an empty shell.
The movie is at its best when it moves to the physical humor. There’s a final face-off at the end of the movie where the tiny freshmen take on the mighty seniors using the techniques that Drillbit taught them. It’s the funniest thing in the movie, but it’s not a knock out by any means, no pun intended.
Drillbit Taylor is a movie that just sits there. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s the baby bear of movies, but on this occasion, it’s not “just right.” Save your money for Rogan’s next writing job, Pineapple Express, which looks like a Coen brothers movie done by Judd Apatow’s posse.
Filed under: Review | Tagged: Jeff Mason
