AT THE MOVIES WITH HALEY ZIMMERMAN
One word to sum up Mr. Woodcock? Ew. From start to finish, this movie was just lackluster and very rarely funny.
A former ugly duckling, played by Sean William Scott, returns to his hometown as a very successful self-help guru to find his mother engaged to his high school gym teacher, Mr. Woodcock. Billy Bob Thornton portrays this cliché high school gym teacher who perpetually beats down on every little guy he can get his grimy hands on, mentally and physically. Most of the time, especially when he’s playing the oblivious “good guy” when around Farley’s mother, Woodcock just makes you want to cringe.
This was definitely one of the worst “comedies” that Scott has ever starred in. Come to think of it, he hasn’t really hit the comedy nail on the head lately (remember The Dukes of Hazzard remake?). Thornton also drops the proverbial ball here, failing to really commit to his role. Honestly, differentiating between his characters in Bad Santa, School for Scoundrels, The Ice Harvest and now Mr. Woodcock might just be an impossible task. Each and every one of these films features Thornton as an apathetic jerk with pretty much the same personality and attitude.
The movie is just a bit… silly. Not funny, silly. I’ll admit that I did chuckle a few times during the course of my viewing, but that was usually just out of the total stupidity of the character’s actions. The jokes in the movie tend to be centered on Scott making a fool out of himself then contorting his face into some goofy expression, which gets old pretty fast. Throughout the story, I was expecting something big and interesting to happen, but this is genuinely predictable and boring.
Relatively inexperienced director Craig Gillespie got the short end of the stick with this movie. Although the overall product is not quite up to par, it at least gives off the impression that he did the best with what he had to work with. Yes, the script is boring and not very funny, but it could have ended up much worse. Going into the theater, I expected a slapstick comedy that might be good for the whole family, but with a title like Mr. Woodcock, the standards probably shouldn’t have been set so high. 2.5 stars.
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