Thursday, April 3, 2008

Hot Rod Review


Pretty much the offspring of Napoleon Dynamite and one of those Will Ferrell man-child sports movies. The early goings are pretty God-awful but a number of funny scenes and nifty little turns from decent character actors make it a tolerable hour and a half. To be honest, I don't really see much in Andy Samberg here. But the supporting performers are of note. Ian McShane steals every scene he's in as Rod's evil-ish step-father and gets all the best lines. Isla Fisher is cute and seems to be trying but doesn't get good lines with which to work. Will Arnett has a hilarious little cameo as Fisher's evil boyfriend, and though he's played the basic role before he's still pretty damn funny. And, finally, Bill Hader, amusing enough in Superbad and quite funny in the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall, who really shows what the Apatow crew sees in him here. The scenes involving Rod and his crew were made tolerable thanks to Hader's dead-pan delivery. To be honest, I wanted to quit on this in the first twenty minutes but it became surprisingly tolerable as it progressed to the point of being mildly funny, despite shameless ripping off a number of (better) comedies.

Overall Score: 4/10

No comments: