Role Models
I have a feeling that this might be the year that Paul Rudd steps into the limelight. He's already well known in the US, at least in certain circles, but he hasn't had many leading roles yet.
The last one was the dire Over Her Dead Body. He’s more often cast in supporting roles, notably in many Judd Apatow movies. He was the surf instructor in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the unhappy husband (and brother-in-law) in Knocked Up.
Role Models is no classic but it’s better than it should be. Rudd shares top billing with Seann William Scott and significant screen time with two teenagers, Bobb’e J Thompson and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin in Superbad). The older men play energy drink reps, Danny (Rudd) and Wheeler (Scott). When Rudd’s character hits 40 he realises he’s in a trough, bitter and disappointed in life. He proposes to his longtime girlfriend (the currently ubiquitous Elizabeth Banks) and she very sensibly gives him his marching papers. Getting high on the acrid green liquid he’s pitching, Danny gets into a losing argument with a tow truck and is hauled in front of a judge for a civil misdemeanor, with Wheeler in the dock beside him. They’re given a choice of jail or community service, specifically, enrolling as big brothers to troubled youths in the Sturdy Wings programme.
Cast details
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Paul Rudd
Born: 06 Apr 1969
Passaic, New JerseyTop rated films View all Monsters Vs. Aliens (2009) 
Role Models - BLU-RAY Version (2008)
It seems like a no-brainer, but then they meet the kids. Ronnie (Thompson) is a ten-year-old with a mouth like Eddie Murphy and an attitude like Mike Tyson. Augie (McLovin) is a tongue-tied loner who goes around in a cloak, wielding a foam broadsword, obsessed with a weekly fantasy role-playing tournament, “Laire”. None of them is really up for a buddy, but for they’re stuck with each other until the time has been served.
If this sounds like standard family-friendly kiddie-tainment, think again. “R”-rated in the United States, Role Models comes from the censor-baiting, sophomoronic end of the comic spectrum. Little Ronnie’s dialogue alone is a stream of sexist slurs and racial epithets. In other words, the movie itself would be a terrible model for any impressionable child.
Role Models: Seann William Scott, Bobb'e J.Thompson
Still, for unimpressed adults there are compensations. Chief among them: Jane Lynch as the founder and manager of Sturdy Wings, a deliciously sidelong riff on a familiar kind of reformed drug addict, who now proclaims herself “addicted to helping” and who stays on the boys’ case with the disconcertingly earnest insistence that “you can’t BS a bull-shitter.”
The role is scarcely more than a vignette, but Lynch somehow contrives to sneak off with yet another Generation XY male-bonding movie: Wheeler and Ronnie get on the same page when the subject turns to boobies; Danny and Augie win their princesses through old fashioned chivalry.
Further down the cast-list, Ken Jeong comes up with some choice stylings as a haughty role-playing royal. But like it or not I have a feeling the character people are going to be quoting afterwards is young master Thompson’s precociously potty-mouthed bad-ass, who reserves his worst slur for Rudd: “Reindeer Games”. Take that, Ben Affleck!
Clearly, this isn’t going to be the movie that puts Rudd into a class of his own. But it does provide further evidence of his talent for self-deprecating, off-the-cuff humour, and with I Love You, Man, Howl and The Year One all coming later this year (as well as voice duties on the animated Monsters Vs Aliens) he’s definitely some one to look out for.
Reviews
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Critics' reviews
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To the casual observer, it must seem as though developmentally challenged slackers have assumed total control of the... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful members' reviews (3)
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162 out of 167 people found this review helpful
AWFUL!
Do not watch this film if you over 16 years old! Its awful!
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32 out of 32 people found this review helpful
Role Models
Very silly but well written film. Quite funny in places, worth renting.
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23 out of 23 people found this review helpful
Role Dawdles
If mediocre be thy name play on! This so so comedy relies on your ability to find 10 year old kids constantly drawing pictures of male genitalia and uttering swear words in the same vein funny. It's the same old tired and tested main protagonist loses girlfriend and must overcome his own gittishness to win her back ably assisted by his dim witted and supposedly funnier friend. Relax, turn your brain all the way to off, drink a gallon of beer and this film almost becomes funny. Would you watch it again, I think not. Role on the undoubted much less funnier (if that's possible) sequel.
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Most recent members' reviews (2)
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
so so
there were a few funny lines in this film i think i expected it to be better but sadly it wasnt under 15 s would probably find it worth watching.
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- bratz from Kidderminster
- Posted 16 Jun 2009 21:53
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11 out of 13 people found this review helpful
Awful!
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen. it is so not funny. Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott doesn't even seem to try to put any effort into saying their lines. Truly grim.
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162 out of 167 people found this review helpful
AWFUL!
Do not watch this film if you over 16 years old! Its awful!
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32 out of 32 people found this review helpful
Role Models
Very silly but well written film. Quite funny in places, worth renting.
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23 out of 23 people found this review helpful
Role Dawdles
If mediocre be thy name play on! This so so comedy relies on your ability to find 10 year old kids constantly drawing pictures of male genitalia and uttering swear words in the same vein funny. It's the same old tired and tested main protagonist loses girlfriend and must overcome his own gittishness to win her back ably assisted by his dim witted and supposedly funnier friend. Relax, turn your brain all the way to off, drink a gallon of beer and this film almost becomes funny. Would you watch it again, I think not. Role on the undoubted much less funnier (if that's possible) sequel.
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11 out of 13 people found this review helpful
[Highly rated reviewer]
2009's first notable comedy
A miserable curmudgeon and a perennial slacker are forced to look after underpriveleged kids in order to dodge jail time. It's hardly high concept but it's enough to make one of the most consistently funny and likeable comedies (that Team Apatow had nothing to do with at least) of the last few years. There's nothing too risque or much we haven't seen before, and it's as predictable as you'd imagine - but it has young kids swearing creatively. Not big, not clever, but very funny. Chemistry from the two male leads is brilliant and easy, and having Jane Lynch as the head of the Sturdy Wings group certainly doesn't hurt.
Paul Rudd should be more famous than he is. Look back on some of the better comedies of the past three years and you'll find he's in pretty much every one of them - 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (yeah, okay, they're all Team Apatow flicks). But when he steals every scene he's in? The guy's stealth comedy gold.
Definitely worth your time if your a fan of the aforementioned flicks.
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- Selfy from Newcastle upon Tyne
- Posted 12 Jan 2009 15:04
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11 out of 13 people found this review helpful
Awful!
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen. it is so not funny. Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott doesn't even seem to try to put any effort into saying their lines. Truly grim.
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10 out of 11 people found this review helpful
???hmmm???
This trailer is not in English???
Very strange!!!! -
9 out of 9 people found this review helpful
[Highly rated reviewer]
Very Overrated
I was looking forward to watching this after reading all the good reviews it had got but after seeing it i'm wondering what all the fuss is about. The storyline is poor and i didn't remember laughing at any of it.
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9 out of 9 people found this review helpful
5* bad
Please do not waste your time with this rubbish film..
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7 out of 7 people found this review helpful
Good comedy
saw this at the pictures the other day as the film i went to see was sold out and i wasn't disappointed its the same humor as American pie, super bad etc really good fun comedy not too in depth but not many comedy's are and for the reviewer who said if your over 16 dont see this im 24
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6 out of 6 people found this review helpful
[Highly rated reviewer]
hilarious!!
totally mindless chill out and laugh ya teeth out fun, even funnier second time round as well.
Critics' reviews
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To the casual observer, it must seem as though developmentally challenged slackers have assumed total control of the... read more on Time Out