Ray bullies DRILLBIT TAYLOR

Available from Amazon priced at £12.98 Freshman year in high school is a terrifying experience for most people. We all probably remember the trembling attempts to navigate through the shark-infested social waters while simultaneously trying to carve out a personality and identity uniquely our own. Some of us on the lower rungs of the pecking order - myself included (what a shocker!) - received more than our fair share of abuse at the hands of bullies. Under those circumstances, you learn to cope through various mechanisms; you could fight back, make friends through humor, or curl up in a fetal position and take it like a bitch. Comedies love to tackle this point in life because it's generally so damn funny. The latest attempt is the OWEN WILSON comedy DRILLBIT TAYLOR, yet another comedy from the JUDD APATOW assembly line written by SETH ROGEN. With such a pedigree, it's hard to understand what went wrong. Wilson plays Drillbit Taylor, a homeless con man living on the beach on California. Unwashed and destitute apparently by choice, Drillbit's luck changes when he answers an ad placed by three terrified high school freshmen who are in search of a bodyguard to protect them from a rampaging and seemingly unstoppable bully. Instead of helping them, Drillbit uses the opportunity to steal from the boys and their rich families while coaching them to confront the bully in a final showdown. The first and obvious problem comes with the basic premise, which lifts huge swatches of ideas from the previous and superior SUPERBAD. We have the fat, curly-haired, jive-talkin' Ryan (TROY GENTILE), the skinny, shy-but-nice Wade (NATE HARTLEY), and the goofy nerd sidekick Emmit (DAVID DORFMAN), all three of which are nearly-exact carbon copies of SUPERBAD'S three protagonists. Unfortunately, the three young actors here - although very good in their roles - fail to achieve the same chemistry as SUPERBAD'S formidable leads. Another problem with the film is Wilson's character. Drillbit is supposed to be cut from the same "grumpy loser with a heart of gold" cloth that deepened other characters like WALTER MATTHAU's Buttermaker in BAD NEWS BEARS. Unfortunately, Drillbit is so thoroughly disgusting and reprehensible that any such endearment is hard to build. I mean, the guy steals from kids. Sure, he gives some of it back at the end, but still ... he steals from them. And lies to them. None of this is helped by Wilson's performance, which borders on catatonic. Wilson has an easygoing charm, most of which is wasted here in a thankless role. But the biggest problem in the film is the unrelenting violence and cruelty. What tone were the filmmakers attempting to achieve??? Not only do the kids suffer robbery and lies; they also get beaten up and abused repeatedly by the bully, played unbelievably by ALEX FROST. Not only is Frost over-the-top in the role; it's also written with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. His bully careens through the streets in his hotrod, trying to run over our three heroes. He bludgeons them at recess. He attacks them constantly in broad daylight like the boogeyman. And nobody - their parents, teachers, or the principal - comes to their rescue or even believes them. It's not only unbelievable ... it's not funny. All of this could be swallowed if the filmmakers could figure out the tone of the film. One minute it plays like a heightened-reality comedy like SIXTEEN CANDLES, then it veers into absurdist comedy like WEIRD SCIENCE, and then falls back into reality-comedy mode like SUPERBAD. The film is disorienting, which is a fatal flaw for a comedy. I can't really recommend it, despite a few laughs. This Drillbit requires additional hardware to work. EXTRAS A few extras here. Besides some additional footage, which pushes the film into "unrated" territory without adding many laughs, the disc includes a cool conversation with Seth Rogen, and a great commentary track by the three boys in the cast, all of whom are obviously talented young performers. OVERALL I'd say skip it, unless you really love Wilson's work or enjoy kids being beaten to a bloody pulp and terrorized. I don't, unless their my own.