Seann William Scott stars as
John Farley – a famous self help superstar with a best
selling book and adoring
fans across the country. Of
course, he
is most excited about being invited back to his hometown to be awarded the key to the
city, and spend some time with his mother, Beverly (Susan Sarandon). Beverly
also is excited because she wants John to meet the new man in her life,
but
Mom’s boyfriend turns out to be Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob
Thornton) – the evil,
sadistic gym teacher who made Farley’s life miserable
throughout middle
school.
Can Farley break them up? Will Mr. Woodcock get the
best of him again?
Mr. Woodcock has some good
laughs (anytime a 10-year old kid gets hit in the head with a basketball that’s
funny, it’s comedy gold), but the movie can be best described as
predictable. Sadly, it is predictable to
the point where the idiots in the audience who don’t know how to shut up (and somehow,
someway they always sit behind me) are predicting exactly what will happen next
and telling their friends, so you have to live through each average joke twice.
Director Craig Gillespie and
writers Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert need to take off the kid gloves and be
nastier. It feels like Mr. Woodcock
needs to be wilder and meaner with more flashbacks to the horrible treatment of
the weaker kids by the gym teacher. The
best jokes are when Woodcock coldly says something outrageous to the kids or
inflicts pain where it is inappropriate.
Instead, Gillespie and the team play it too safe, like they fear
offending someone in the audience. If
you go to see a movie with this title, you are not easily offended. People who go to see Mr. Woodcock expect Bad
Santa 2 (or School for Scoundrels 2 or Bad News Bears 2), so give it to them, instead
of delivering a watered down version.
Worst of all, they try to inject some phony, cheap emotion to make the
movie get all weepy and dramatic at the climax, which feels entirely out of
place.
Scott has some decent
moments early on, but never feels like he has been driven to the brink of
lunacy, which is what the plot wants us to believe and needs to make his scheme
more interesting and justified. Meanwhile,
Thornton
breezes through the movie like he has done this before, but still makes us laugh
at the right moments because he is that good.
1
½ Waffles (Out of 4)
Mr. Woodcock is
rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, thematic material, language and a mild drug reference.
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2007 - WaffleMovies.com
