Life > October 4, 2007

By CeCe Brooks | Contributing writer

I tend to blame the previews if I subject myself to a bad movie, but this time it was my own mistake. When I saw previews for Mr. Woodcock, I didn’t think it looked like a future classic.

Although I am not a big Billy Bob Thornton fan, I thought I would give him a shot because of a seemingly humorous plot and American Pie alum, Seann William Scott. It seemed worth a trip to the movies at least. Apparently, my original instincts were correct.

John Farley (Seann William Scott) is a self-help author who is touring for his first book, already a big success. His book, a guide to “getting past the past” in order to become more self-confident, was largely inspired by his middle school PE teacher, Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton). Mr. Woodcock humiliated John as an overweight preteen, which led to John’s eventual foray into the self-help genre. When John is offered the biggest honor in his hometown, the “corncob key,” he travels home to surprise his widow-mother (Susan Sarandon) only to find a surprise himself: his mother is engaged to Mr. Woodcock. John finds that Mr. Woodcock is still the abrasive bully he remembers him to be, so he decides to take action and break them up. John has a series of setbacks as a result of bad luck, misconception and just plain poor decision making.

Both the writing and the acting of this movie failed to live up to their potential. The writers did not provide enough humor, even for the most immature of moviegoers. They tried to capitalize on this particular group by making several references to the obscenity of the title character’s name, foul allusions to parent-figures in bed and a few slapstick moments, but this kind of comedy got old fast. I also had issues with the ending of the movie. I don’t want to give anything away for those of you who are going to ignore what I’m saying and go see this movie, but basically there is a lack of the growth needed for a movie to have a purpose. There is the appearance of resolution, but in my opinion everyone seems to be just the same as they started out, which is not a good thing. I can’t blame the dullness of the movie on just the writers, because the actors were also definitely to blame. As I said, I wasn’t a big fan of Thornton in the first place, but I knew he could be funny. As Mr. Woodcock, he wasn’t. Seann William Scott was also disappointing. He did not even come close to reproducing the audaciousness of his infamous Stifler character. Sarandon filled her role well and was fairly amusing, but there wasn’t much to her character for her to build on. The one saving grace of this film was Amy Poehler, who played John Farley’s publicist. She has several funny quips including, “Could I get a real bottle please? I’m an alcoholic, not a Barbie doll.” My Name is Earl star Ethan Suplee didn’t help the situation much either. His character, Nedderman, was just plain annoying, only adding creepiness and idiocy to the movie. Overall, I thought that the movie was full of good actors who couldn’t fix an already faulted script.

Mr. Woodcock isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s close. It was 25 percent awkward, 25 percent gross, 25 percent annoying, 20 percent dull, and maybe 5 percent funny (that does add up to 100% if any of y’all were checking). My friends who reluctantly went with me were not happy (one even fell asleep). If you really want to see for yourself, by all means do, but I’ll bet no matter what type of movies you like, you will not love this movie. Maybe, maybe, it might be worth renting if you’re really that bored.