Danny and Wheeler travel from school to school doing a "just say no to
drugs" dog-and-pony show, the real purpose of which is to sell energy
drinks. They are two guys going nowhere, although the difference between
them is that Wheeler doesn't care. He's an overgrown frat boy whose life
revolves around parties and poontang, and he actually enjoys wearing a
minotaur suit all day. Danny, however, once envisioned a real life, and
has fallen into a deep and gloomy state of permanent depression.
Danny has a particularly bad day and loses it, slipping into
destructive behavior which causes the two of them to get sentenced to
150 hours of community service in lieu of jail time. They get assigned
to the judge's favorite charity, which is kind of a "big brother"
organization which pairs up male volunteers with boys who need adult
male role models. Wheeler (Stifler) is paired with a foul-mouthed
black kid with a real attitude, and Danny (Paul Rudd) is paired with
an older teen (McLovin) who is lost in a fantasy world of live-action
role playing in which the participants create medieval kingdoms. It's
kind of like playing Dungeons and Dragons in the park with plastic
swords.
The film often misfires when it parodies the big brother organizations,
and the basic storyline progresses like about a hundred movies you've
already seen. In fact, you already know exactly what will happen, believe
me. That doesn't matter. The characters are drawn from life, the dialogue
has a raunchy charm, and the film has several good things going for it:
1. The scenes involving the role-playing game are very entertaining.
The film somehow manages to present this world (which really exists) in a
humorous light, but without contempt. Indeed, Danny's contemptuous first
impression is soundly rebuked by his character arc. Damn, I promised
myself I would never use the term "character arc." That means I've now
used every cliché in the English language except "deconstruct."
2. Jane Lynch, as the head of the big brother group, is wildly funny
and sometimes so far off-the-wall that her lines are utterly baffling,
which somehow makes them funnier. (I wonder how much she ad-libbed.) She
manages to exude an aura of insanity beneath the tough-hearted compassion
she shows for the kids, all while constantly reminding the adults that she
used to suck cocks for blow (and she uses those words).
3. There are three or four set pieces that had me howling out loud at
the dialogue. Two examples:
In one scene, McLovin gets a bunch of laughs by delivering a stirring
speech to his medieval warriors, an inspirational call to battle which
weaves an incompatible tapestry consisting partly of Kenneth Branagh in
Henry V and partly of Samuel L Jackson in Jackie Brown. The sound of
McLovin cussin' like Samuel L is funny enough, but he also peppers the
speech with anachronistic references to the fact that he looks like a
young Marvin Hammlich. (Which he does, now that I think about it.)
In another, which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, Danny's
lawyer/girlfriend tries to get a client to accept a plea bargain instead
of pleading not guilty, which he insists he must do despite the fact
that he was caught burglarizing a store on the security cam. His defense
of "that could be any bald guy" to the first part of the tape is
somewhat belied by the next part, in which he announces his name and
crime on the tape by saying something incriminating to his crony -
something to the effect of: "Whoever thought that I, Joe So-and-so,
would be here in the Best Buy Warehouse on July 4th, 2007, stealing all
the Panasonic XD-17 Plasma TVs?" No matter. He still insists he is
innocent.
Bottom line: a pleasant, big-hearted, raunchy and adolescent way to
pass the time! I enjoyed the hell out of it.
