April 7, 2008
I want my $6.50 back
My roommate and went to see Drillbit Taylor last night. It wasn't entirely by choice: we wanted to be out of the apartment for a few hours, and there really wasn't anything else that looked remotely worth seeing.
I'm pretty disappointed with Rogen and Apatow for even being associated with the project. In Knocked Up, there were a few situations which were slightly unlikely, but not actually impossible. Though more or less harmless, there is absolutely no way kind of "hazing" the "heroes" in Drillbit were subjected to in school would ever be permitted at a school as wealthy as the one depicted here. Instead of buddying up to the principal, the perpetrators would be headed straight to juvie. And chasing someone with a car isn't hazing, it's assault, reckless driving, and attempted homicide, which doesn't send you to juvie, it sends you to the Big House. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that random adults are not permitted to wander around the school building, and even if they do manage to get inside, they aren't mistaken for teachers, especially if they're actually homeless bums. It just doesn't happen that way.
I'm okay with stretching the bounds of plausibility in cinema. In some sense that's kind of what it's for. Yes, pretty girls don't usually go for slovenly bums the way Katherine Heigl did for Seth Rogan, but dumber things have happened, especially where alcohol is concerned, and the story that results rings true enough to be interesting. But given today's security-crazed pseudo-Orwellian high school environment, the idea of bringing an unknown adult into a high school is so far-fetched it would never have occurred to any reasonably intelligent student even to try, and that same environment would probably prevent the bullying which is the premise for the movie in the first place. Real people don't act like this. Even in settings where it's quite clear that the situation isn't real, like, say any sci-fi movie ever, a film can still ring true if it captures what real people would do in those circumstances, especially if the filmmakers are skilled enough to show how the human condition doesn't really change across contexts.
Needless to say, Steven Brill is not so skilled. I don't know the last time I was so totally unengaged by a movie. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, and was completely uninterested in finding out what happened in the end. We walked out after about 45 minutes.
