‘Drillbit’: Owen gets boring

At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook

The tagline of Drillbit Taylor is "You get what you pay for." Therefore, I’d suggest seeing the matinee or waiting to rent the DVD.
Drillbit Taylor just isn’t worth paying full price to see.
Owen Wilson’s slacker persona has suited him well in movies like Wedding Crashers and You, Me and Dupree. However, much like the roles chosen by Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn, Wilson’s one-trick pony is on wobbly legs. And it’s there for all to see in Drillbit Taylor, which forces Wilson to play bodyguard to three dorky teens terrorized by a high school bully.
Speaking of three dorky teens, Drillbit Taylor has more than a few similarities to last summer’s much funnier Superbad. The reason probably can be traced to co-producer Judd Apatow and co-writer Seth Rogen, who both had a hand in Superbad.
Remember Seth, the overweight, curly-haired kid played by Jonah Hill in Superbad? In Drillbit Taylor, his name is Ryan and he’s played by Hill’s younger lookalike, Troy Gentile. Remember Evan and Fogell (a.k.a. McLovin) from Superbad? This time around they are rail-thin Wade (Nate Hartley) and seriously geeky Emmit (David Dorfman).
Instead of being high school seniors looking for love and alcohol, Ryan and Wade are freshmen looking to be the coolest small fish in a big pond. Unfortunately for them, Emmit gets shoved into a locker by mean bully Filkins (Alex Frost), and Wade and Ryan come to Emmit’s rescue, thus sealing their fate as friends.
This is when Drillbit Taylor starts to take on the plot of 1980’s My Bodyguard, starring Adam Baldwin (who makes a cameo here) and Matt Dillon. Ryan, Wade and Emmit place an ad to find a bodyguard for hire. Along comes Drillbit (Wilson), who claims to be a U.S. Army ranger discharged for unauthorized heroism. In reality, Drillbit is a homeless — he calls himself "home-free" — beach bum looking to scam and steal from the kids so he can get enough money to move to Canada.
The movie gets moderately funny when Drillbit pretends to be a substitute teacher to protect the kids at school and winds up spending more time watching lonely English teacher Lisa (played by Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife).
The three teen actors are OK in their roles, but it’s nothing too memorable. The parents of the kids are either non-existent or too dimwitted to give two hoots about their kids’ problems at school. The principal doesn’t seem to care much either.
Owen Wilson’s well-publicized suicide attempt last year is hard to forget while watching him play Drillbit. Wilson doesn’t seem to stretch himself too hard to play this sorry fool, but, then again, perhaps it’s because he has mastered the art of being a believable bum.
Unlike Superbad, which felt like an authentic retelling of common high-school ills, Drillbit Taylor feels too unrealistic to have any semblance of truth in its storytelling. Maybe the Apatow machine needs to slow down and not churn out movies so quickly. But that doesn’t seem likely — next month’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall also comes from Apatow Productions.
My fingers are crossed that it will be funnier than Drillbit Taylor.
Movie Grade: B-