School for Scoundrels (2006)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fantastic!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

... and this really isn't bad at all. This is not intellectual humor, this is paintball to the nuts humor. If you like that, AND I do, then this show brings the funny. Not much else to say. They shoot for low-brow humor and they hit it. In the nuts. With a paintball. It's worth watching every 5 - 10 years.

School for Scoundrels (2006): Dir: Todd Phillips / Cast: Jon Heder, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacinda Barrett, Michael Clarke Duncan, Ben Stiller: Comedy about learning opposition to what is really best. Jon Heder plays a shy individual with no self confidence and working at a job with no future. He learns of a self confidence course and enrolls under the teachings of Dr. P. This leads to competed affection for a young woman in his building. Observant with twist after twist in the finale. Directed by Todd Phillips as a followup to Old School and certainly an improvement over the dreaded Road Trip. Heder plays a role viewers may relate to going from pushed over to being challenged and eventually successor. Billy Bob Thornton plays Dr. P who covers his tracks while dishing out lies. Jacinda Barrett plays the standard love interest whose only interesting feature is that she is Australian. The idea that Heder is fighting for her leaves no surprise as to how this turns out. Michael Clarke Duncan plays an associate to Dr. P who is nothing more than a thug. Ben Stiller plays a depressed student who was a victim of the teacher's antics in the past. Although a message of self respect does exist, this film seems more interested in bathroom humour than anything else. Like the class itself it presents a potential theme then buries it within nonsense leaving effective plot twists to gain honors. Score: 6 / 10

Reading the other comments on this film showed that few people realize the title, at least, hails from a British film released in 1960, which while having the same name, is fundamentally different. Indeed, I could find NO reference to the original in the film's credits (which I suspect saved them some CASH).Which brings into focus the whole issue of "remakes'.For instance, the recent film entitled "The Italian Job" was really NOT a remake. It was merely the central character's favourite film and it "inspired" him to use the techniques in the film to pull off a job. In fact, the recent film might have done better with a completely DIFFERENT title, as it must have irritated many viewers who were expecting a true remake. In fact, if you forget about the original film, the "remake" - as a stand-alone film - is actually quite GOOD.The same could be said of "The House On Haunted Hill".On the other hand, TRUE remakes are usually RUBBISH. Treatments of great modern French films and classic British and American films almost ALWAYS suffer in comparison with their originals. This writer avoids them like the plague - I only watched this one (on TV) to see how the subtlety of the original's theme of Lifemanship, Gamesmanship and One-Upmanship had been handled by Hollywood - it hadn't.In fact, apart from Billy Bob Thornton's character name of "Dr P" (an obvious reference to Alistair Sim's character - "Potter" - taken from the original writer of the books which formed the basis for the original film) and the inclusion of a game of tennis (Ian Carmichael did not HIT Sim in the original!) the only thing taken from the original was the concept of a secret school designed to turn losers into winners.But in the original, this was achieved by the use of "ploys" designed to instill doubt and confusion in the students' opponents - "Your opponent is everyone who is not YOU" - while in the "remake", the "techniques" involved were more akin to a self-assertiveness class, with subtlety being replaced by naked aggression.So, as with the "remakes" of "The Italian Job" and "The House On Haunted Hill", this is a film that did itself NO favours by trying to be another example of Hollywood's OBSESSION with remakes. As with the afore-mentioned, it was actually quite a good film on IT'S OWN MERIT.

Ring! ring! Operator: "1-800-4LOSERS, how may I help you?" Producer: I'm doing a movie and I need a few losers for the film.Operator: You've called the right place. What type of losers are you looking for? Producer: I don't know, who do you have?Operator: Well, we have a few available. We have Dan Fogler, star of "Balls of Fury". We have David Cross who has played a loser in too many movies to count. And... Oh yeah! We have America's hottest loser right now: Jon Heder, the guy from Napolean Dynamite, The Benchwarmers, and Blades of Glory.Producer: Great, I'll take them all.And so goes the movie. Revenge of the nerds without being as funny nor as compelling.