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Even Owen Wilson's light touch can't save Judd Apatow's latest California caper, Drillbit Taylor, writes Xan Brooks
Judd Apatow's reputation as Hollywood's new king of comedy looks set to take a mauling with the release of Drillbit Taylor, a knockabout tale of bullied teenagers and the doofus who protects them.
Produced by Apatow from a script co-written by Seth Rogen, this bears a passing resemblance to last year's Superbad, right down to its nerdish, hormonal inhabitants and theme of ritual high-school humiliation.
Yet it lacks that film's dash and confidence, wandering uncertainly from one comic setpiece to the next and struggling to make its presence felt. The final bell can't come soon enough.
Nate Hartley and Troy Gentile play the schoolyard Laurel and Hardy (one rail-thin and tearful, the other porcine and splenetic) whose days are made a living hell by the class psychopath (Alex Frost). But the real star is Owen Wilson: his "Drillbit" is a Venice Beach deadbeat with delusions of grandeur.
Responding to an online ad for a bodyguard, Drillbit passes himself off as a former special ops soldier who was discharged for "unauthorised heroism". In his hobo paradise off the freeway, this drawling fraud starts schooling the kids in the sort of "black ops fighting moves" they will need to defend themselves.
Lesson one introduces them to the dark violence of "Kung pow", which appears to involve a lot of grappling and pulling of hair. Lesson two is in the fiendish art of "Mexican judo", which results in one boy being shoved unceremoniously down a wooded slope.
All of which is actually pretty funny. It's just that director Steven Brill doesn't know where to take it from here, and the film first blinks and then loses its direction. It throws in a love story, a robbery, a bloody showdown on a suburban lawn. By the end, even the reliable Wilson looks all at sea.
Whatever his recent off-screen troubles, Wilson is usually brilliant at playing these kind of wide-eyed charmers. His stock in trade is the all-American huckster; at once blissfully unflappable and curiously poignant beneath that golden-boy veneer.
By rights, the role of Drillbit ought to be tailor-made for him. And yet, the longer the film progresses, the more awkward and ill-at-ease he becomes; his gentle, refined brand of comedy rubbing up the wrong way against the scatological antics that surround him. Someone like Billy Bob Thornton - more wired, more scary - would probably have been a neater fit.
As for Apatow, he'll doubtless bounce back from this misstep. He's too shrewd a film-maker not to, and with the likes of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up he has already shown that there is a market for sharp, smart studio comedies that hide a little soul behind their high-concept gloss.
Drillbit Taylor may be fitfully amusing and fleetingly engaging. But it's neither soulful enough nor polished enough, not by a long chalk. Every litter needs a runt, and this one is Apatow's.
