Behold the flaccid whimper of the PG-13 comedy. With all f-words barred, Mr. Woodcock comes straight from the misguided Hollywood oven, cut from the same mold as Meet the Parents. But where Parents was merely a subpar, half-amusing entry, Woodcock dials the humor down several notches into the dregs of non-comedy.
Appropriately enough, Woodcock builds on a premise pulled straight from middle school bathroom talk – how funny would it be if there were a movie with a guy named (giggles in pre-pubescent voice) Mr. Woodcock? Answer: not funny at all. From start to finish, Woodcock misses the mark with every predictable punch line, most of which are pulled from the previously mentioned premise of a serious jerk with a phallic last name.
There could have been a way to pull this one off had the creative team come out swinging, armed and ready for a truly nasty R-rated comedy. However, the PG-13 tether keeps Woodcock sterile and harmless, and only occasionally do the attempted jokes heighten the film into straight-up bad taste.
But still, there is little good here. The film lacks a certain fortitude recently exhibited in the hilarious pair of Apatow Stock Company films, Knocked Up and Superbad. Instead, Woodcock decides to eschew such disposable cinematic elements as character, emotion and humor in favor of following its half-baked plotline to the grave.
John Farley (Seann William Scott, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown) returns to his hometown in Nebraska as something of a local hero. Rising from his regrettable childhood as a teased “fat kid,” Farley reaches celebrity status with his best-selling self-help book about letting go of the past.
The filmmakers lead the audience to believe the source of Farley’s most painful childhood woes was not his father’s death, but rather Farley’s extended torment at the hands of a middle-school phys-ed teacher, Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton, The Astronaut Farmer).
Skipping out on the rest of his book tour to receive local honors, Farley discovers (shock!) his mother Beverly (Susan Sarandon, In The Valley of Elah) has been shacking up with the dreaded Mr. Woodcock. Beware, John, something very Oedipal is on the horizon.
Unfortunately, scribes Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert completely miss out on the possible Freudian angle in their film debut. Their characters simply bump shoulders for roughly 90 minutes of lame physical comedy and “Your mom is so hot!” jokes, but somehow manage in the end to learn great lessons about life and compromise.
Director Craig Gillespie (also behind the upcoming Lars and the Real Girl), a relative newcomer, does little more than roll the action in a serviceable helming job. He lets the focus settle on the back-and-forth clashes between Farley and Woodcock. Though Farley lives to forget the past, his encounters with Woodcock unearth a trove of awful gym-class memories, told via a series of inserted flashbacks.
And so, Farley disregards his own advice on burying the past and decides to set out on an ill-fated mission to wreck his mother’s impending marriage to Mr. Woodcock. Both the set up and execution are entirely familiar, but formula is nothing new in Hollywood cinema. Formula can work very well when written with flair – unfortunately, something Woodcock lacks in droves.
Joke after joke face-plants along with Woodcock’s clumsy characters. Each little episode within the film plays out exactly as expected: Farley and Woodcock go to the gym to workout – Farley falls off the treadmill and smashes his head. They move on to a nursing home pool – Farley jumps in and nearly drowns. Sometimes, toward the blessedly short finale, Woodcock gets hurt instead. Thank goodness for variety.
In Woodcock, Thornton finds little room to expand upon the sadistic drill-instructor type. His sarcastic nonchalance wears thin early, and is not nearly clever or entertaining enough to carry an entire film.
Sadly, the leading man duties shift to Scott. To be fair, the role of John Farley has practically no appeal or nuance, and is essentially only a bastardized version of some rejected Jim Carrey character. However, the film business rarely deals in fair, and so the audience must endure Scott as he struggles to put on his jealous face, and act his part in the Oedipal triangle.
As Farley’s mother, Sarandon plays her role amiably – or at least as amiably as the movie allows. Too late into Woodcock, the filmmakers decide Sarandon’s Beverly should receive a second dimension. Her years of loneliness as a widow get reduced to approximately two or three lines of dialogue and, in a flash, she returns to the one-dimensional world from which she came.
For all parties involved, Woodcock proves to be a wholly embarrassing debacle. The film overcompensates by building up its bravado, only to arrive impotent and unsure – and, to put it simply, as one huge cock-block.
zherrm@umd.edu