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ROLE MODELS (2008) (***1/2)

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This comedy actually does something that raunchy comedies rarely do – develop a full cast of compelling and original characters. Raunchy comedies often have man-boys acting like idiots, but this comedy has unique and realistic immature men at its center. They’re not role models, but that might be exactly what the kids they mentor need.

Danny Donahue (Paul Rudd, I LOVE YOU, MAN) is very unhappy with the way his life has turned out. But instead of changing anything, he just complains… a lot. His girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks, ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO), an up-and-coming lawyer, is getting tired of his cocky, pessimistic attitude. He works with his best friend Anson Wheeler (Seann William Scott, AMERICAN PIE) as a spokesperson for an energy drink, travelling from middle school to middle school giving out free samples. On one particularly pissy day, he ends up driving the work vehicle into a statue while it’s still attached to a tow truck. As part of their punishment, they are ordered to volunteer as mentors to children.

At Sturdy Wings, ex-drug addict Gayle Sweeny (Jane Lynch, BEST IN SHOW) runs a tight ship. As she says you can’t con a con artist, but she only states it with more colorful language. Danny is assigned the “little” Augie Farks (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, SUPERBAD), a teen who dresses like a Dungeons & Dragons model and is obsessed with the live action role playing game LAIRE, where teens and adults dress up and pretend to wage war. Wheeler is assigned Ronnie Shields (Bobb'e J. Thompson, FRED CLAUS), a fowl-mouthed elementary school kid who goes through “bigs” like a king goes threw pawns.

For Danny, being forced to spend time with Augie might be worse than going to jail. He looks down at Augie’s inability to operate in the real world, living through fantasy. But Danny begins to warm to Augie and starts to see LAIRE through the awkward teen’s eyes. Augie has more control in the fantasy realm, but there are still bullies there too. King Argotron (Ken Jeong, THE HANGOVER) wields his control over his subjects like a petty bureaucrat, drunk on middle management power. His middle-aged man takes dress up really seriously.

Wheeler is trying his hardest to just survive his time with Ronnie, who goes out of his way to make it difficult. But soon Wheeler finds that he has something in common with the little kid – boobs. With great subtly the film suggests that Ronnie’s acting out is an extreme expression of a lack of a guiding male figure in his life. He’s smart and doesn’t need some old dude telling him what he should and shouldn’t be doing. But what he really needs to know is how to get girls and Wheeler is an expert.

Surprisingly again there are a lot of names credited on the script and story for such a cohesive screenplay. Story credits go to Timothy Dowling and W. Blake Herron and screenplay credits to Dowling, Ken Marino, Rudd and director David Wain, who was a director on the great TV sketch show THE STATE. Together they created a character driven story that also happens to be laugh out loud funny. I’ve seen it several times now and the humor holds up, because it’s not just jokes, but well observed personality quirks.

What ultimately happens in the end seems inevitable to some degree, but the film actually makes us care about it and look forward to it. Conflict comes from the characters’ nature not tacked on problems from the outside. In many ways the film has fun with the big battle scene that ends so many films. Like I said, the characters aren’t role models, but they are all misfits to some degree or another. It laughs at these misfits, but respects them. Respecting others is at the core of the story. You have to respect the filmmakers for putting so much thought into a film where every other word is a cuss and the band Kiss is a role model.

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Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks