We can't go back to the dear old movie bullies of yesteryear. It's too
late. The world is now officially more dangerous and violent teens
aren't much of a punch line. The new Owen Wilson vehicle "Drillbit
Taylor" knows this. The film's eerily unfunny antagonist skulks around
in a hooded sweatshirt, looking like one of the Columbine perps - as
much as it's possible to do so and still exist inside some sort of
comedy, albeit a queasy and increasingly grim one.
"Drillbit Taylor" makes last summer's very funny "Superbad" look even
better in retrospect. In that film, the three marvelously contrasting
teen geeks played by Michael Cera, Jonah Hill and Christopher
Mintz-Plasse were fully themselves and, at their best, fully hilarious.
They didn't need to prove to anyone they could take a punch, or
re-enact scenes from "My Bodyguard"; their primary transgressions were
trying to grow up too quickly and talking a faster game than they could
play. Judd Apatow produced "Superbad," coming off the huge success of
his even bigger hit "Knocked Up," and together those films told a more
or less continuous story about boy-men learning to become less the boy
and more the man.
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