Opening Day: 4 January 2007

Synopsis :

The movie, starring Jon Heder and Billy Bob Thornton, is about a beleaguered New York City meter maid who is plagued by anxiety and low self-esteem. In order to overcome his feelings of inadequacy, Roger (Jon Heder) enrolls in a top-secret confidence-building class taught by the suavely underhanded Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton). Aided by his assistant, Lesher (Michael Clarke Duncan), Dr. P uses unorthodox, often dangerous methods, but he guarantees results: Employ his techniques and you will unleash your inner lion.

Movie Review:

It might seem like a match made in comedy heaven. With both Napoleon Dynamite and Bad Santa joining up in “School for Scoundrels” together with the director of “Old School”, Todd Philips, it just looks like a recipe for success. But as we’ve seen in the recent “The Benchwarmers”, that isn’t always the case. A staple in most American comedies of a similar mould, story naturally takes its cue from the screwball antics. As well as being more uneven than it is allowed to be, “School for Scoundrels” is also as commercially mainstream as it gets. There isn’t a soft heartfelt centre, nor is there a bitter coating of stinging spite. It just ends up becoming an utterly redundant exercise juvenile humour that’s been done one too many times.

You know what they say. Girls love the bad boys, or at least the ones that don’t take them seriously. Roger (Jon Heder), a luckless, maladjusted meter maid (no matter how much he desists to be called that) is infatuated with the girl next door, played by a radiant Jacinda Barrett. To overcome his debilitating shyness and lack of coolness, he enrolls in a confidence-building class taught by Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton) and Lescher (Michael Clarke Duncan). Heder just doesn’t pull off the shy guy schtick well enough, and the lack of presence next to Thornton’s suave, arrogant mixture of vile smoothness and rascality is deeply obvious. Whereas in “Napoleon Dynamite”, the lack of an onscreen personality was a boon to the character, it now seems like a performance flaw derived from a lackadaisical comedic endeavour.

Roger finds support from his other gormless classmates played by Walsh (Matt Walsh), Diego (Horatio Sanz) and Eli (Todd Louiso) as the film ostensibly kicks to its first and only gear when the lovably callous Dr P turns the tables on Roger’s non-existent love life. A battle of wits emerges, one that Roger does not even know he’s participated in. It’s reminiscent of the Nicholson/Sandler showdown in “Anger Management” when the student is pitted against the teacher in supposedly innocuous everyday situations.

Thornton’s a real treat in this, just not enough to warrant much interest in the overall product. The charming rogue routine is something he’s fine-tuned since “Bad Santa” and has found a niche in black comedies like “Bad News Bears” and the sorely underrated noir-comedy, “The Ice Harvest”. Unfortunately it’s starting to seem like American comedies need either Will Ferrell or Steve Carell to get any sort of leverage on the concept of funny.

Movie Rating:

(A thoroughly weak syllabus that even Thornton fails to save)

Review by Justin Deimen