The Movie Nut

"Mr. Woodcock"
Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton,
Seann William Scott, Susan
Sarandon, Amy Poehler
Rating: PG13 (for crass be
havior, sexual innuendo and
adult language)
Running time: 88 minutes
Best suited for: Billy Bob die
hards
Least suited for: fans of so
phisticated comedy

In "Mr. Woodcock," Seann William Scott plays John Farley, a young self-help writer (think Tony Robbins 20 years ago) who's overcome his own tormented past to write a pop best seller, "Letting Go." Seems this onceuponatime pudgy preadolescent with widowed-Mommy issues (and apparently a deeprooted phys-ed terror) has found the fortitude to slim down, move on and make a bundle.

They say you can't go home again, but Farley's decided to try anyway. Snuggled deep in the heart of Nebraska, the town he grew up in has offered its now famous newfound son the Corn Cob Key, and Farley's festering ego bubbles forth to snatch the honor.

Once home, however, he finds his mother (Susan Sarandon) happily dating- not only dating, but truly, madly, deeply in love with Mr. Woodcock (Thornton), John's old, sadistic phys-ed teacher. Farley's mortified.

The problem is that Woodcock and Mrs. Farley are as touchyfeely as two teenagers home alone for the first time. Watching the son watching mean old Woodcock leading his giggling mother upstairs, we realize there must be a special nono place in the Freudian handbook somewhere. So the writer decides to break up his mother's romance with Woodcock, thinking he's saving her from the torment he remembers from his own childhood.

"Mr. Woodcock" is strictly a one-trick pony of a movie, although that trick is fairly decent when the camera's focused on Billy Bob- playing Billy Bob. Granted, this is the Billy Bob he showed us in "Bad News Bears" and "School for Scoundrels," not in "Sling Blade," "Friday Night Lights" or even the searingly funny "Bad(der) Santa" Billy Bob. The guy truly has a puzzling duality.

Yet most of the film is spent following Farley's tepid (okay, stupid) attempts to break up the relationship. In doing so, he violates most, if not all, of his own best-selling principles- and thus he reduces himself to little more than a con man in a nice suit.

(Had this been a clever backhand spoof on the self-help craze- a cinematic twist that worked nicely in "Thank You for Smoking"- the film would have been far more clever. But it wasn't, so it isn't.) Farley pretty much self-destructs, and it isn't pretty.

It's this vindictive (and uneven) humor that takes "Mr. Woodcock" down a notch or two, the film reminiscent in places of the barely funny "Just Friends" in 2005 and the less funny "Envy" in 2004. We're laughing at other people's misfortune, and some folks may find that discomforting. I guess it's no different from laughing when somebody slips on a banana peel. But then if they don't get up, don't we feel a little less impressed with ourselves?

While "Mr. Woodcock" teeters on this uncomfortable edge of mild sadism, it does manage to regain a semblance of comedic luster. There's a nice slapstick balancing act between the two men that works for awhile, and the laughs are honest. The inadvertent bruises that befall these two buffoons while trying to work together are actually "Mr. Woodcock's" funniest moments.

However, there's also Hollywood's obligatory thirdact ballast, that pervasive and unspoken "morality clause" that eventually washes the film in a nice rosecolored hue. We learn that Mr. Woodcock isn't really so bad after all, nor is John as horrible as he lately appears.

But this superficial sugarcoating doesn't really compensate for the marginal humor- in fact, it leaves only an artificial taste. We're being fed a backhanded morality lesson by those very people pulling the puppet strings. Are we being manipulated into liking this movie?

Someone should remind filmmakers that sugarcoating a bad movie (or a marginal one) doesn't really make it better. It just gives the audience a funny taste as we all leave the theater, many of us wondering why we laughed in the first place.