Review of Drillbit Taylor (2008) by Chads. — 23 Mar 2008
"My Bodyguard" had John Houseman. "Drillbit Taylor" has a house party. Old school wins. Three boys(one straight, one totally gay, one...the jury is out) need protection from a school bully(who is like a malevolent Ferris Bueller; everybody likes him, even the principle).
They place an ad. They hire a bum. Since Drillbit(Owen Wilson) doesn't attend classes, he poses as a substitute teacher. If you're unwilling to suspend your belief that school authorities wouldn't be aware of a stranger in their midst, "Drillbit Taylor" will try your patience.
It tried mine. Without big laughs, the film can't cover its tracks. We notice the fallacy of the plot. In Richard Linklater's "The School of Rock", you went with the flow; you didn't care that the substitute teacher was teaching his class how to rock without any repercussions from the principal.
Making Drillbit an army deserter is a nice touch. He's a pacifist, a modern-day Siegfried Sassoon(the famed English poet who protested the first world war; immortalized in Pat Barker's award-winning novel "Regeneration").
He'll fight only if the reason is just. But Drillbit, evidently, doesn't have a problems with torture. In one scene, he leaves his employers' tormentors hanging in mid-air, in the dark, pelted with machine-fired tennis balls.
It's just another example of lazy screenwriting in a lazy attempt to evoke Judd Apatow's "Freaks and Geeks".
This review of Drillbit Taylor (2008) was written by Chads. on 23 Mar 2008.
Drillbit Taylor has generally received mixed reviews.
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