PLOT: A nerd signs up for classes and hopes to learn how to become an alpha male, but the teacher is a charlatan who pursues the nerd's girlfriend. Sadly, you'll probably never know how the story ends because you'll have left the theatre apoplectic with rage long before this thing drags its sorry cinematic ass to any sort of conclusion.
Say, here's a great idea -- let's make a comedy with the surly star of Bad Santa and the nebbish star of Napoleon Dynamite and just stand back and collect the money!
School For Scoundrels is a new comedy with Billy Bob Thornton as a grifter who claims he can teach weaklings to be macho men, and Jon Heder as a nerd who signs up for those macho classes.
Heder plays Roger, a mild-mannered parking officer from New York. He's a mouth breather. The guy is a total loser who gets picked on by everybody. He's a complete failure with the opposite sex. He wears dopey pajamas.
Thornton is Dr. P, a tough-talking charlatan who charges a lot of money to lead classes on leadership and being a winner. Start a confrontation! Play paintball for blood! Take what's yours! Never apologize! Lie to a woman if that's what it takes!
Meek Roger takes the classes and begins to do better in life. He works up the courage to go on a date with Amanda, the girl of his dreams (Jacinda Barrett). It goes pretty well, if you can overlook the fact that Roger is a stupid idiot with no social graces who can't hold his liquor.
Somehow, Roger's success is a red flag to Dr. P. and he goes after Amanda, too.
Competition between the two men escalates into more lies, vandalism and even violence, that last being the only area where a viewer can identify. The movie is a collection of scenes that don't work, lines that aren't funny and characters you won't care about.
After more flat, humourless action, some genius parachutes Ben Stiller (Embarrassing wig: check; psychotic eye-rolling: check) into the story in one last desperate attempt to make something funny happen. Roman candle, people.
School For Scoundrels wastes a decent cast and all sorts of comic talent along with your time and money. And the movie will be extra disappointing for fans of Todd Phillips, the vastly overrated filmmaker behind such puerile comedies as Old School and Road Trip. You were warned.
BOTTOM LINE: Crap.
(This film is rated PG)
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