Text size:

'Drillbit Taylor'

Rating:

BY GENE SEYMOUR | gene.seymour@newsday.com

March 21, 2008

That "Drillbit Taylor" is co-produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Seth Rogen is temptation enough to consider this comedy about high school freshmen terrorized by bullies as "Superbad" on training wheels. There's even a chubby, woolly-headed little sourpuss (Troy Gentile) very much in the Rogen physical prototype. This was previously enacted by Jonah Hill as a horny high school senior in "Superbad" - which was regarded for good or nil as a junior-circuit version of "Knocked Up."

One now expects the Apatow hit machine to move further down the grade level to dredge up the glandular yearnings of awkward fourth-graders. If "Drillbit Taylor" is any indication of how the quality of such hypothetical projects will curve proportionally, consider this a warning to keep your distance.

The Apatow reputation, even with such lesser, but still amusing products as "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," psyches you up for a good time at "Drillbit Taylor." Yet the movie is so choked throughout with talk about punching, being punched and punching back after being punched that you come away feeling as shoved around as Ryan (Gentile), Emmit (David Dorfman) and Wade (Nate Hartley).

Those are the three nerdy unfortunates singled out for especially sadistic treatment by Filkins (Alex Frost), a borderline psychotic upperclassman at their high school, whose principal (Stephen Root) is oblivious to the trio's complaints of being urinated upon in the school lavatories, jammed into lockers and trophy cases and threatened with vehicular homicide while walking home.

No wonder the boys decide to pool their resources and solicit outside muscle to deploy against Filkins. The best they can get is the eponymous Taylor (Owen Wilson), who claims to be an Iraq war veteran schooled in martial arts but is really a beach bum to whom his new employers are little more than a fresh wellspring for freeloading.

Wilson seems very much in his comfort zone, using his market-approved golden scammer persona to carry this enterprise on his shoulders. The younger actors all carry out their mostly archetypal roles with prodigious confidence, especially Frost, the remorseless, hooded-eyelid embodiment of a middle-schooler's worst nightmare.

Unfortunately, the relative waste of Apatow spouse and repertory regular Leslie Mann as an English teacher enraptured by Drillbit's horse hockey is indicative of a larger failure to humanize - or at least, make less grotesque - the wretched perils and humiliations imposed upon adult and teen characters alike. The Apatow vibe may still carry some righteous mojo. But "Drillbit Taylor" proves that even the smoothest-running hit machine can stand a tuneup every few miles.

DRILLBIT TAYLOR (PG-13). Owen Wilson is a vagrant solicited by three desperate high school dweebs (Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile, David Dorfman) to protect them from a bully (Alex Frost). Makes you feel as if your arm's being twisted on your way to class - and, in case you're wondering, that is not a compliment for the film. With Leslie Mann and Danny R. McBride. Directed by Steven Brill. 1:42 (vulgarities, crude, racy humor, drug references, violence, partial nudity). At area theaters.