STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2008
STARRING: Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile, David Dorfman, Owen Wilson, David Koechner, Matt Walsh, Lisa Lampanelli
WRITTEN BY: Kristofer Brown & Seth Rogen
DIRECTED BY: Steven Brill
GENRE: Comedy
RATING: PG-13

Who among us hasn’t been bullied at some point while growing up? And when it happened, who didn’t dream of showing up the next time with someone - either dad, an older sibling or a ninja robot - who’s big, strong and capable of silencing that bully once and for all? (Those of you that don't understand that feeling should look in the mirror - you were probably the bully.) Drillbit Taylor takes that idea one step further. It’s the latest in a seemingly endless string of teen comedies produced by cultural phenomenon Judd Apatow. And like most of his films (Knocked Up, Talladega Nights), it’s a bold, yet uneven combination of low-brow humor, pop cultural references, sneak-attack sweetness and underdog triumph.

Owen Wilson plays the title character, an unemployed beach bum and small-time crook who answers a help wanted ad for a bodyguard, despite lacking training and experience. The ad was posted by three geeky teens, Ryan, Emmit and Wade (Nacho Libre’s Troy Gentile, The Ring’s David Dorfman and virtual unknown, Nate Hartley, respectively), who are terrorized by bullies on their first day of high school and determined to return more prepared on their second. In the beginning, Drillbit simply sees a few easy marks with rich parents and thinks he’s landed the lowest of low-impact jobs. In fact, he convinces his employers that he’s a master of cover operations, protecting them 24-7, and assures them that "just because you don’t see me, doesn’t mean I’m not there." Of course, as the film progresses, he starts to feel honest-to-goodness concern for the kids. He even goes so far as to impersonate a substitute teacher in order to keep an eye on them, once he realizes that "as long as you’ve got a coffee cup in your hand, nobody says anything."

While the nutty premise feels fairly original at first, the story doesn’t take long to devolve into one we’ve seen many times before. Unpopular kids taking on the popular kids is certainly a familiar plot device, but so is the self-centered bad guy who gets a wake-up call from a bunch of cute kids. No stranger to either theme, screenwriter John Hughes (using a pseudonym in this case) contributed to the story, which explains a lot. But almost as if the filmmakers were afraid of being pigeonholed, the movie refuses to stand in any one place for too long. Romantic interludes are followed by goofy pratfalls and feel-good exchanges are interrupted by fits of violence, often all within a just a few minutes. Most of the blame for the tone problems and the highly distracting pacing can fall at the feet of director Steven Brill, the cinematic criminal behind such travesties as Little Nicky and Heavy Weights.

The movie is not, however, without redeeming qualities. Apatow cohort Seth Rogen and former Beavis and Butt-Head writer Kristofor Brown succeed in lending some irreverent humor to the otherwise ho-hum screenplay. Owen gets a number of things to say that are much funnier than the one-liners highlighted in the trailer. To its credit, the film does change-up the premise at just the right moment. Drillbit is introduced into the high school faculty about halfway through the movie, just when its initial set-up is most in need of a shot in the arm. That’s also when the talented Leslie Mann shows up as Lisa, a fellow teacher. She’s somewhat underused, but certainly brightens things up as she provides more motivation for Drillbit to start pondering the straight and narrow. Also, the nice thing about the kids at the center of the film is that they truly are dorks of the highest order. These three are full-on nerds, from the start of the film through the end. And somehow, in a standard story of this nature, it’s refreshing to see the world change around the characters, rather than the characters change to adapt to the world.

On the way out of the theater, I heard someone label the movie "Superbad for kids" (referencing yet another Apatow flick). That’s actually pretty accurate. The three main characters in this film, while four years younger, do line up perfectly with the three stars of that one, physically and personality-wise: you’ve got the chubby troublemaker, the lanky shy-guy and the clueless pipsqueak. Of course, the language and general crudeness are toned down quite a bit here. And while normally, I’m not overly sensitive to that sort of thing, I found myself surprisingly pleased with this film’s lack of insistence on one-upping the shock quotient of other recent comedies - including some of Apatow’s own. It's one of the elements that allows Drillbit to stand out a bit and that's when the movie succeeds - when it, like the nerds and underdogs in all of the Apatow-verse films, is decisive in doing what it wants to do and goes about doing it in its own way.