Hot Rod

HOT ROD (Akiva Schaffer, 2007)

In the comedy HOT ROD, Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) aspires to be a stuntman like his deceased father, an assistant for Evel Knievel who died trying to get out of his boss’ shadow. Rod is using a moped to attempt jumps, so it may not take long for him to follow in his father’s footsteps in dying a horrible death. Rod also desperately wants to earn the respect of his stepfather Frank (Ian McShane), a tough old coot who withholds his love until Rod can beat him in a fight. When Rod is told Frank is in need of a heart transplant that insurance won’t cover, he decides to stage a 15-bus jump to raise money to save Frank’s life so he can beat him to a pulp.

Supporting Rod in his pursuit of stunt glory and charitable fundraising are his younger half-brother Kevin (Jorma Taccone), who is also team manager and videographer, and his friends Dave (Bill Hader) and Rico (Danny McBride), who builds ramps and oversees the explosives used for showmanship. Rod also invites his next-door neighbor and crush Denise (Isla Fisher) to join the crew. She has a soft spot for Rod and helps with his training regimen, but to his chagrin, she’s dating Jonathan (Will Arnett), whose loathsomeness she somehow hasn’t noticed.

Like WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, HOT ROD successfully spoofs a film niche without requiring knowledge of what it’s sending up. In this instance the target is 1980s inspirational sports dramas about working class teenagers. As part of the meta humor about older actors playing high schoolers, like a 23-year-old Ralph Macchio in THE KARATE KID, Rod acts like a petulant adolescent but appears to be in his early twenties, although the character’s age is never clarified. The soundtrack swells to the bombastic music of Swedish hard rock band Europe, which establishes the period the film is trying to evoke even though it is seemingly set in the present day. Arnett hilariously plays every jerk boyfriend in teen movies standing in the way of the sensitive hero and the girl of his dreams.

The jokes favor the absurd over the referential. Rod’s punch-dancing scene in the forest calls back to Kevin Bacon doing something similar in FOOTLOOSE, but the weirdness of the comedy is paramount. That sequence concludes with Rod’s lengthy tumble down a hill. Director Akiva Schaffer extends the fall well past the usual point so that it becomes funnier as it seems like it may go on forever. The same strategy is at work with Samberg and Taccone’s surreal repetition of “cool beans” being transformed into a proto rap song. The exclamation points to scenes often break traditional rules of humor, and the punchy editing rhythm keeps the film moving without making it seem like a series of sketches.

HOT ROD was initially intended to be a Will Ferrell film. While the screenplay is attributed to Pam Brady from that version of the project, the uncredited rewriting by Samberg, Taccone, and Schaffer adapts the script to The Lonely Island’s sensibility. There’s no denying that much of what gets laughs in HOT ROD is dumb, but the creativity and rambunctious spirit build a lot of momentum. This very funny film is remarkably consistent because of the strange chances it takes.

Grade: A-

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, 2016)

Pop sensation Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) is preparing to release his second solo album and has a documentary crew around to capture every moment in POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING. Conner’s ascent started as a member of the Style Boyz with childhood friends Owen (Jorma Taccone) and Lawrence (Akiva Schaffer), but the rap trio breaks up when Lawrence gets angry about not receiving writing credit for Conner’s guest verse on an award-winning hit. Lawrence drops out of the music industry and becomes a farmer. Meanwhile Conner enjoys even greater success as a solo performer. Owen helps make beats for Conner’s tracks and DJs during his concerts, but for the next album and tour cycle Conner has reduced his contribution to pushing play on an iPod.

Questionable singles, bad reviews, and a backfiring release strategy that automatically pushes Conner’s new material to home appliances begin to erode his popularity. Album sales are suffering and his concerts aren’t selling out, so at the suggestion of his manager Harry (Tim Meadows), he agrees to take on underground hip-hop star Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd) as an opening act. Ticket sales get a boost, but a string of embarrassing incidents threaten to damage his career even more.

POPSTAR puts a poptimist twist on THIS IS SPINAL TAP. It takes the music and the industry seriously while goofing hard on both. As outlandish as much of the lyrics and behavior can be, the main joke is that a lot of it isn’t far removed from real songs or public artist missteps. The absurdity is certainly turned up, but the humor reflects what life looks like inside and outside the pop bubble. Samberg, Schaffer, and Taccone employ a lot of referential jokes but have the good sense not to make the funniness contingent on being able to spot what they’re satirizing. It’s an added bonus if you recognize the film’s analogues to Tyler, The Creator and a Macklemore & Ryan Lewis hit, among many other zingers, but the jokes still land for those who don’t read Pitchfork or Stereogum every day. Considering the broad nature of the jokes, the film tends to relatively subtle, such as how Conner adapts his real last name for showbiz.

As members of The Lonely Island, Samberg, Schaffer, and Taccone are pop stars in their own right, and their ties with popular artists surely helped in getting many of them to cameo in POPSTAR. Whether appearing as themselves or playing parts, like Justin Timberlake as Conner’s approval-seeking personal chef, the presence of so many celebrities may take some of the teeth out of the comedy. POPSTAR pokes fun at the music business, but it adopts more of an insider’s perspective. That quality doesn’t make the film less funny, but it does seem like the humor is somewhat soft-pedaled. One of the most savage and funniest bits is reserved for the vultures at a TMZ-like television show, which is indicative of where the film’s sympathies are.

Still, implicit criticism is found in POPSTAR and is identified through the form it takes and the recent slew of pop star documentaries it riffs on. The title calls back to JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER. The style suggests that, at face value, the film is an unvarnished look at an artist, as if Conner or any other pop act, like One Direction, are just humble folks with ordinary origins even as such statements celebrate their excess and inspire envy. POPSTAR slyly draws attention to the fact that social media postings and theatrically-released documentaries for fans as ostensible promotional campaigns are just the current way of managing perception to keep revenue flowing. There’s a reason why artists authorize something unflattering being distributed widely. The joke may seem like it’s on the pop stars, but if we believe it, isn’t it on us?

Grade: B

That's My Boy

THAT’S MY BOY (Sean Anders, 2012)

At this point it’s tempting to wonder if Adam Sandler is screwing with us.  He’s made plenty of unfunny, mean-spirited, juvenile films that the majority of critics have thrashed. In a filmography overflowing with bad reviews, his last effort, JACK AND JILL, could be his most panned.  (Although I am a consistent detractor, I actually thought it was halfway decent by his low standards.) With THAT’S MY BOY it’s as though he’s taken up the gauntlet to be as terrible as many think he is.

Like many boys on the cusp of adolescence, seventh grader Donny Berger (Justin Weaver) has a crush on one of his instructors.  He lusts for his young, pretty math teacher Mary McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino) and goes out of his way to flirt with her. The difference in Donny’s situation is that the educator of his affection is similarly smitten.  Donny and Mary have sex at various spots around the school until they’re discovered in flagrante delicto at a building-wide assembly.

Scoring with the teacher earns the hearty respect and approval of male classmates and faculty members.  It even makes him a national celebrity.  The law, however, takes a different view of the matter.  Mary, who is pregnant with Donny’s son, receives a lengthy prison sentence for the underage affair.  Donny is given full custody and cashes in on his fame by publishing a book and selling the TV movie rights to his story.

The adult Donny (Sandler) is adrift trying to relive his glory years.  He tools around town in a rusty old Fiero with Rush’s starman logo on the hood and wiles away his days drinking, gambling, and hanging out at a strip club.  His son, who he named Han Solo, left home upon turning eighteen and has avoided staying in contact.  

Donny is desperate to end their estrangement when he is informed he owes the IRS $43,000.  The only way he can raise the money quickly enough and avoid jail himself is to arrange a prison reunion with his boy and Mary (Susan Sarandon) for a television talk show.  With a bit of luck he learns that Han Solo is now a hedge fund manager named Todd (Andy Samberg).  He’s at his boss’s oceanfront home on Cape Cod preparing for his wedding to Jamie (Leighton Meester) when Donny crashes the festivities posing as Todd’s best friend.  Rather than being upfront with Todd about his dilemma, a tactic likely doomed to failure, Donny tries to persuade him to visit his mother with a story of her being deathly ill.

There’s no getting around the fact that THAT’S MY BOY is a comedy hinging on how cool and hilarious statutory rape is.  Young Donny is to be admired for fulfilling the schoolboy fantasy that’s the stuff of a Van Halen video.  High five, bro!  The film takes every opportunity to dismiss objections because Donny doesn’t feel he was abused and professes his love for her from 1984 through the present day.  The easy out would have been to make Donny a high school senior and thus minimize the skeeviness of this whole ordeal.  That it didn’t is kind of stunning.  

Obviously there’s a cultural double standard at work here.  If the genders were reversed, the likelihood is virtually nil that this scenario would be played for laughs and winking endorsements. That’s not to suggest the topic is off-limits in comedy but that it would take someone exercising more than locker room outrageousness.  The Farrelly brothers are better attuned to breaking taboos while retaining humanity, and I could envision Lars von Trier trying to pull off something like this with pitch-black humor.

Or maybe John Waters should have been given a swing at THAT’S MY BOY.  The film toys with transgressive humor and celebrating sketchy people on the margins.  It positions Donny as the coolest guy around.  Everyone but super-lame Todd loves his Masshole-accented, raging alcoholic dad.  Good grief, THAT’S MY BOY is somewhat of a comedic redemption for entertainment industry has-beens Vanilla Ice and Todd Bridges, who turn in surprisingly funny supporting performances.  

Of course, Sandler isn’t bold enough to let his character and the film be as unrepentantly nasty as they want to be.  How could he allow it when THAT’S MY BOY gives in to his sickly sweet sentimental streak and testifies to how awesome he is?  THAT’S MY BOY amplifies the raunch in Sandler’s usual routine, and the misogyny is as pronounced as ever in his films.  (Give credit to Meester for going above and beyond the call of duty in a monstrously written role.)  It just doesn’t have the conviction to own up to its ugliness without ample reminders that its star is a misunderstood sweetheart.

Director Sean Anders brings a level of formal competence that Sandler’s Happy Madison productions often lack.  The comedian seems more energized on screen this time around.  Chances are THAT’S MY BOY isn’t a contemptuous stunt to see what Sandler can get away with and what audiences will accept; it just seems like one.

Grade: D-