Drillbit Taylor - B

There is crazy, and then there is seeing Drillbit Taylor at 12:35am on a Saturday in the middle of DC’s famed “Chinatown”. This movie should be a guaranteed crap fest, but it’s not. Apatow Ho! (That will be the new war cry when I approve of an Apatow project) He’s back with the goods that makes it so damn hard for me to boycott this guy. Judd produces while Steven Brill, the writer/director of Heavy Weights and writer of all three Mighty Duck movies brings his craft to sweet, sweet fruition.

Stories revolving around high school usually get too complicated, but here, Brill keeps it real. Wade (Nate Hartley) and Ryan (Troy Gentile…not kidding) are about to enter high school. They want to make a good impression but accidentally make total asshats of themselves and end up being beaten up by a bully. Enter Drillbit, aka Owen Wilson. He’s a homeless veteran of some war everyone including him forgets, and just happens to respond to a craig’s list ad posted by the kids (the kid from The Ring tags along and they become a triad of dorkiness) seeking a bully beater upper. Taylor lies and says he was ex special ops and here we are with a movie.

Wilson as I’m sure movie watchers like yourselves are aware, recently had a bout with suicide. Ironically, I was giving blood when I heard this news and remarked wittily to the friend leaking fluid next to me how ironic an occurrence this was. Back to the review…

Taylor is a great lead character. I am completely serious. He walks the line between likable big brother character and abominable, lying homeless man out to only save his own skin. The screenplay by Brill is nothing short of challenging. Yes, I’m still talking about the movie Drillbit Taylor. Somehow some way Brill makes it about confronting the lies homeless people probably tell us all the time. When do homeless people lose track of what is real and what is fabricated? How on Earth did they go from being a baby, like all of us were at one point in our lives, to being a sidewalk drawing, obscenity muttering, kung fu practicing iconoclast?

This is/will turn into a rant quite fast but hear me out. The suicide of Wilson could be something along the lines of a complete questioning of self. In the film, Drillbit must fight through the web of lies he himself has created. Well, don’t actors do the same thing? Characters aren’t people, they evoke emotional responses from audiences but that’s because we allow them to. What if that was the crisis that made Wilson turn in on himself? Let me know what you think about this one, I’m really quite interested.

So Wade and Ryan do everything to fit in possible and the bully Filkins (Alex Frost) just keeps the pain a comin’. Drillbit teaches the kids everything from hiding techniques to WWF moves until the climactic finish we were all expecting to happen goes down at Filkin’s house. He’s an emancipated youngster so all bets are off when the forces of good and evil collide. Fans of Dewey Cox might be disappointed because there is real wit and clever dialogue in these lines. You won’t find the pooch kicking absurdity but you will find the appropriately casted high school filled with kids who LOOK LIKE HIGH SCHOOLERS. I can give Apatow all the smack in the world, but his contribution to movies for me rests solely in the brilliance of 40 Year Old Virgin, Heavy Weights, and casting kids rather than adults that look like kids. Kudos.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Charlie Bartlett - B-