Shawn's Drillbit Taylor Review

2008 Movie # 36 - Drillbit Taylor

First off, I like Owen Wilson. I want nothing but good things for Owen Wilson. Good Owen Wilson movies = Bottle Rocket, Wedding Crashers, Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited (ok so all of the Wes Anderson movies), Shanghai Noon, Starsky and Hutch, Zoolander, Behind Enemy Lines is entertaining in it's own right, Rushmore, Anaconda (fuck you Anaconda rules) and The Cable Guy (i like it).

On the other hand we should just ignore things like the Big Bounce, I Spy, You, Me and Dupree, etc. So now that we've gone through all of Owen's filmography, the conclusion is simple, I like the man. However, Owen Wilson needs to stop making movies that purely rely on him being well...Owen Wilson.

This movie suffers from the same problem that You, Me and Dupree did and that's that the script isn't very funny and sort of just relies on Owen to save things by acting like himself. He does what he can but it's just not enough. It may just be time for Owen to try something different, or maybe just stick exclusively with Wes Anderson, who knows.

My other problem with this movie (aside from the fact that it just isn't that funny) is that it focuses on entirely the wrong story. I was actually pretty interested in the storyline of the three nerds taking on their bully tormentors. However the movie feels that we should be much more interested in Drillbit's story of redemption. Unfortunatly for them, this is not at all the case. This movie should really be about the kid's and really anytime it cut away from them to show Drillbit's side of things, I kind of lost interest. I wanted to see the kids overcome their bullies, not Drillbit.

Speaking of the bully characters, do bullies like these actually exist outside of the realm of film? These guys (the main bully at least) are clearly out of their fucking minds and need to be locked away from the rest of society immediatly. Some of the things they do to these kids would easily lead to expulsion and possibly even jailtime. The fact that it goes completely ignored by both the principal and the parents is just unreal. This movie exists in some sort of bizarre plain of existence where adults are a-ok with this kind of shit going on.

Overall, this movie isn't painful to watch and is even likable at parts, but it doesn't leave anything even resembling a lasting impression after it's over. It has a couple of funny-ish parts but as a comedy it overall mostly fails. I do have to give it partial credit for the parts that focused on the plights of the kids, I was actually quite invested it those.

**/5