Review: "Drillbit Taylor"

Even if you're unaware of John Hughes' involvement in Drillbit Taylor, you'll be able to formulate such a conjecture after the first few scenes. Ryan and Wade, the best-friend-heroes who can't help but serve as the high school's beacon of lameness, come from sweet families in nice houses where clueless mothers nurture and even clueless-er stepfathers teach you to "walk it off." And silver platters are household items of the highest value. Drillbit Taylor would have felt right at home in 1986 as part of a lopsided double feature with Weird Science, but in 2008, it feels dated and offputting even though it's been put through the Judd Apatow conveyor belt of topical hilarity.

The high school otherworld in which the movie takes place is an overly-simplified take on the teen hierarchy. Luckily, it pretty much focuses only on bullies and nerds, except it doesn't even quite get those right. Even considering this is a movie, the amount of torture that the bullies get away with is absurd. And the fact that they pass it off as "hazing" to the principal--who laughs it off like a dope--is a tough pill to swallow, at least since 2003. And yet, I was still kind of rooting for the bullies.

The dorks in the movie are painfully dorky, but not in a lovable way. Ryan--the fat one--goes by T-Dog and never lets go of the belief that he's suited for gangsta culture. (I could go into a full blown essay about how grossly out-of-touch the race relations are in this film, but I'll whittle it down to this thesis: it's funny when white people act black, but it's distracting when black characters are in the foreground of a shot.) Wade--the skinny one--is almost as pathetic as his mean ol' stepdaddy makes him out to be, although much of the problem lies in Nate Hartley's awkward, smirky performance. I hate to rag on a child actor, but the kid needs to tag along with Saorise and Abigail for a while to see how it's done. And then there's David Dorfman--the creepy son from The Ring--hamming it up as a lispy, musical-loving social leech to complete the trio. When the bully issue becomes too much, the kids reach out for a bodyguard.

And that's where homeless army deserter Owen Wil...I mean, Drillbit Taylor comes in. Scamming the kids out of their possessions while teaching them self-defense (and scoring with a hot English teacher. Dude!), Taylor's a good guy with bad intentions and it takes about, oh, forty-six seconds before the social outcasts melt his heart and make him rethink his plans. You can guess the rest.

Drillbit Taylor isn't painful, not most of the time. The datedness actually settles into nostalgia at parts. I won't lie; it was kind of refreshing to see a high school movie climax in actual fisticuffs. And Owen Wilson, playing the homeless guy you've never seen on the Promenade, keeps the movie moving. His sun-drenched charm--although underused and occasionally faulty--is the only sign that yes, it is in fact actually 2008 now.