Hola all. Massawyrm here.
If there’s one thing that separates the wheat from the chaff, it is making a comedy about an individual subculture that is equally as funny to John Q. Popcorn as it is to the subculture being lampooned. Nowhere is that principle more evident than in films about us geeks, dorks and nerds. Oh many try, but most fail. Why? Well it is very easy for someone to stand back and say “Look! Aren’t those people weird? What losers!” But can you make the people you’re laughing at laugh at themselves? Most of the time the answer is no.
The chief problem with making fun of nerds, geeks and dorks is this: as the single most picked on groups in the American schema, we’ve heard it all. And much like Steve Martin in the classic comedy Roxanne, we tell much better jokes about ourselves. So when I see these films that try to milk humor from the donning of a cloak or the rolling of dice and they can’t live up to the jokes my weekly D&D group makes about the same topic, well it’s time to hang it up and write about what you know, junior.
Which is what is so refreshing about the new Paul Rudd/Seann William Scott comedy Role Models. Okay, REFRESHING isn’t the word. Surprising. Surprising is the best way to describe this. At first glance this looks like just another one of those not-nearly-as-smart-as-it-is-pretending-to-be Frat Comedies that have been assaulting the theaters over the last few years. You know, the kind in which non-functioning man children are put into very real situations and we watch as an unending stream of juvenility ensues. But as you dig a little deeper, the image becomes muddier as you discover that David Wain both co-wrote and directed this.
Now Wain is best known as a sketch comedian who wrote and directed much of the classic, genre obliterating comedy of The State. Strange, warped and far too ahead of its time, The State contained material that I quote even to this day, some 15 years later. I’ll often fondly recall word for word one of Barry and Lavon’s speeches or speak at length about how much I would like to “dip my balls in it.” But what Wain was best at on television proved to translate poorly to film. While both Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten have devoted cult audiences, I found them both to be a nigh unwatchable, episodic series of gags filled with more misfires than hits.
So what happens when you take the Frat Boy comedy and give it over to a sketch comedian dead set on making his first truly narrative feature? You get an incredibly funny film that hits almost every joke on the nose. Rudd and Scott are two lifetime losers stuck in a dead end job who have one bad day that could send them to jail…unless they are willing to complete a month of community service taking care of two precocious kids. While they spend a bit of time on the relationship of Scott and his perfectly paired hornball, fatherless child in search of a father figure story, the thrust of the film involves Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse as a lonely, misunderstood dork who is heavily into role playing via the world of LARPing. For those of you fortunate enough to not be familiar with what that means let me enlighten you a bit. The phrase means Live Action Role Playing and is effectively like playing Dungeons and Dragons, but with costumes, props and no dice. It’s like Cosplay, but with rules.
Yeah. It’s a special level of hell located at the bottom of the gamer food chain ripe for the comedy picking…if done right. Well, Role Models walks a very fine line both being sure to openly roast the community with scathing commentary that scores a number of bull’s-eyes, while equally embracing the sheer joy of it, fully illustrating why someone could get caught up in the whole affair. By the time they get through the insanity of the third act, the film seems not to be holding its nose while wading through it, but fully in love with its subject, ready to throw on a cape and get into the fun themselves. It’s a rare comedic treat that proves not only to be on par with most geek related humor, but at times even funnier. They nail it in a way that explains the behavior to Joe Sixpack, letting him laugh at all the ‘fruits’ while making jokes that show the gamers that they actually know what the hell they are talking about.
And like any great comedy, the film has a lot of heart. It not only loves its subject matter, but its characters. A sharp turn from Wain’s previous efforts, this fully illustrates his capacity to make fully realized, Apatow style comedies more akin to the Apatow produced (as opposed to directed), more heavily scripted comedies. Well written and funny as fuck, this easily stands as one of the better comedies of the year and one well worth seeing. If you’ve ever LARPed, spent time at a Ren Faire or know what SCA stands for, this movie is going to split your side wide open.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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