Hot Rod

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: August 3rd, 2007 (wide)

Starring: Jorma Taccone, Andy Samberg, Ian McShane, Isla Fisher, Sissy Spacek 

Directed by: Akiva Schaffer 

Premise: Self-proclaimed stuntman Rod Kimble (Samberg) is preparing for the jump of his life. Rod plans to clear fifteen buses in an attempt to raise money for his abusive stepfather Frank's life-saving heart operation. He'll land the jump, get Frank better, and then fight him, hard.

[pete]

god, a bunch of comedians can't be a little more subtle with their napoleon dynamite/ ron burgundy (summer movie 2004) inspirations?

[polkablues]

Screw it, my goodwill towards the Lonely Island is high enough that I'll see this anyway.

[picolas]

longer trailer:

http://www.iklipz.com/MovieDetail.aspx?MovieID=18c3124c-39b2-465a-8daa-a1684d164074

still looks surprisingly unfunny.

[modage]

its crazy that he has a movie already since he hasn't even been on snl that long.  i wonder if this bombs will it effect his status as 'cool new guy' that must be in every sketch?

[grand theft sparrow]

god, a bunch of comedians can't be a little more subtle with their napoleon dynamite/ ron burgundy (summer movie 2004) inspirations?

Pete, you don't even know how right you are.  I just saw a test screening of this and it's pretty awful.  I've always regarded Andy Samberg as the Jimmy Fallon to Adam Sandler's Mike Myers and this cements it.  It's about 15 minutes worth of story and 5 minutes worth of laughs interspersed throughout 85 minutes of "we've seen this before".  There is SO much Napoleon Dynamite here (with even one of the characters named Rico... more on that in a minute), an embarrassing amount of Billy Madison/Happy Gilmore, some Anchorman, and a quick smack of Rushmore that really made me roll my eyes.  The theft is so painfully obvious.  And Pam Brady, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's collaborator, wrote this script.  It's got several SNL alum, a couple of which have actually been funny on the show, and this is the best they all could come up with?

Samberg can't hold this movie together.  Here's a character that needs to have some sort of characterization, like any of the movies I mentioned in the above paragraph, but there's nothing done with the character to give him any kind of distinction.  And Jorma Taccone wasn't given enough to do for me to even say anything about.  I've seen some of the Lonely Island stuff before, so I know they're funny, but they just aren't here.

And the cast that they managed to assemble was simply to have names in the movie.  Will Arnett, Ian McShane, Isla Fisher, and especially Sissy Spacek are completely wasted.  Bill Hader from SNL has a couple of amusing moments but the oddest casting, in my opinion, was the best part of the movie: Bust-Ass from All The Real Girls plays the aforementioned Rico (sandwiched in between Samberg and Isla Fisher on the poster above) and he is the only person who hits any genuinely funny notes, largely because he delivers them like he's in a David Gordon Green movie.  He is the only redeeming thing about this movie (completely off-topic: I wish that he had coached John C. Reilly for Talladega Nights because this is what his character needed).

There were a couple of scenes that made me laugh out loud but I can't even really remember what they were.  Everything else in the movie is a string of SNL digital short-caliber jokes and not even as many as they needed for a 90 minute movie, so almost every gag is stretched out to Family Guy length.

Since it's a test screening, they gave us the "some of the things you see may not make it into the final release" but at 85 minutes, it's still going to be fucking horrible unless they decide to reshoot half the movie in the next two months.  I mean, I laughed more at the pair of jeans crumpled up next to the toilet in my stall after the movie than just about anything actually in the movie.

i wonder if this bombs will it effect his status as 'cool new guy' that must be in every sketch?

Probably not.  The audience I was with was laughing pretty consistently.  If it bombs, it's going to have a following with kids too young to be allowed to watch Jackass.

[pumba]

I really, really liked it.

It's really not like Napoleon Dynamite. Billy Madison, yeah - but I think that's a good thing.
Chester Tam steals the movie three times. His 30 second scene at the beginning (at the pool) is worth price of admission.

I also actually really enjoyed the visuals! It was just nice to look at - i liked the style - it was really childish.

Some jokes KILL - some jokes are meh - some jokes fall flat - and some jokes arn't even jokes. But it's like they had this big plate of food and you were able to take what you wanted. I dug it.

[Ravi]

Hot Rod had some funny to hilarious moments, but I wished the entire film was as fearless as the the final fight scene or the Flashdance scene.  If you're going to do a film where the humor is more or less random and not particularly serving a story or characters, why not completely embrace that style? 

The film was mostly a mishmash of half-formed ideas, some hilarious and some that weren't all that funny.  I was hoping it would be denser with jokes.  A film can be packed with jokes and gags and still move forward in the story.  The jokes were hit-or-miss and I only laughed every 5 minutes or so, sometimes less.    People are still doing the gag where a character walks into a street in a wide shot and "unexpectedly" gets hit by a car?

The plot (a wannabe stuntman tries to earn $50,000 through stunts to get his stepdad a heart transplant so he can beat him up to win his respect) is ludicrous enough to drive a hilarious film, but the serious scenes are too earnest and the other scenes aren't funny enough to make up for that.

[polkablues]

I could never tell while watching it whether the problem was that the Lonely Island humor only works in 2 minute shorts, or just that the script they were working from didn't give them enough free rein to make it work.  It wasn't very good, but it was certainly good enough that I'd like to see them try something else, but next time develop it themselves from the ground up.  A feature length version of "The 'Bu", for example.  I'm already laughing!