Posted by: Christine on Jun 21st, 2009

Leave a Comment »

Role Models

I went into Role Models thinking it’d be a decently funny movie with a heartwarming side effect…and I was pretty much right. It’s not nearly as funny as movies like Dodgeball or Superbad, but it was much funnier than some other comedies I’ve seen recently.

If you’ve seen the previews you get the basic idea – Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott break some laws and get sentenced to community service. The judge assigns them to a Big Brothers/Big Sisters-style program where adults are paired with kids and teens that could use a good influence in their lives. Needless to say, Rudd and Scott’s characters aren’t exactly good influences.

The storyline progresses pretty much as expected – they hate the assignment, but don’t want to go to jail. Eventually they start to care about the kids. They do something to break the kids’ trust, and then have to work to fix it. I’m not telling you anything you couldn’t have predicted on your own. While predictable, the movie was still good.

The highlight of the movie was the interaction between Seann William Scott’s character and his “Little” Ronnie (played brilliantly by the very young Bobb’e J. Thompson). The two work together as flawlessly as a seasoned comedy duo.

There were two negatives to the movie, though they shouldn’t necessarily stop you from watching it. One – Elizabeth Banks was underused. She’s an incredible comic talent (not to mention gorgeous), but in this movie she was very much filler. Two – Paul Rudd’s character is such a tool. I like Paul Rudd. He’s a likeable guy. Every movie he’s in, he always seems like a fun guy to hang out with. His character in the movie, though, is truly unlikeable. It was actually distracting, I thought, since I found myself being annoyed that he was so out of character instead of paying attention to what was happening.

Despite my two minor complaints about it, I did enjoy the movie. Christopher Mintz-Plasse was very McLovin-like, but in a charming kind of way. The comedy was solid, if not the funniest movie ever. The heartwarming bits weren’t too cheesy. And Kiss features prominently in the storyline. What more could you want?

I’m glad I didn’t shell out $10 plus popcorn money to see this on the bigscreen, but it was definitely worth the rental.

Posted by: Mike on Aug 13th, 2008

1 Comment »

It’s no secret: Paul Rudd is hysterical. From his role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, to The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Here’s the trailer for his new flick, Role Models.