Movie Review: Role Models
Seann William Scott (American Pie) and Paul Rudd (40 Year Old Virgin) team together for the moderately funny Role Models, a buddy movie about two energy drink representatives who find themselves mentoring in a big brother program after getting in a little trouble with the law.
Wheeler (Scott) and Danny Donahue (Rudd) are a couple of misguided energy drink reps who travel from high school to high school pushing their product. While Wheeler is content with his place in life as a partying womanizer, dressing up as a Minotaur every day, Danny is an eternal pessimist, extremely discontent with his job. After a chain of unfortunate events, Danny has a melt-down that lands him and Wheeler in front of a judge. When faced with the choice between jail time and 150 hours of community service, the duo choose the later and enroll as mentors in a big brother program. Wheeler becomes big brother to Ronnie, a fatherless delinquent who shares Wheeler’s obsession for the opposite sex. Danny mentors Augie, a nerdy teen whose sole passion in life is to participate in a real life role playing game, seemingly a mix between The Lord of the Rings and King Arthur. Both big brothers resent their roles, their little brothers, and find their most natural mentoring tools to be vulgarity and various forms of pessimism. By the end of the movie, the role models and boys begin to bond and all eventually ends well.
While Role Models has its corny charm and its funnier moments, the overall feel of the film is somewhat stale and unoriginal. Wheeler is nothing more than a remade Stiffler from American Pie, and Danny seems very close to Rudd’s character in The 40 Year Old Virgin. There are not one but two cheesy music montages, a smattering of vulgar jokes, and the relationship between Wheeler and Danny is unfriendly and unappealing. The movie does have its bright spots such as a clever ending and a fairly funny performance by Paul Rudd, but overall the movie lacks uniqueness and lasting appeal.
1.5 out of 4 fuses!
Corey Latta
