By Curt Schleier
Oh, sure, you’ll laugh out loud watching MR. WOODCOCK. You will snicker, you will smile, you will groan. But you won’t feel good about it. MR. WOODCOCK is a guilty pleasure, along the lines of that great intellectual series of AMERICAN PIE films. Need I say more?
Jasper Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton) is every overweight kid’s nightmare of a gym teacher, a sadist who gets pleasure in humiliating his charges. How does he check whether the students are wearing cups? He hits them in the crotch with a bat. How does he stop a kid with asthma from wheezing. He orders him to do laps.
John Farley (Seann William Scott, appropriately Stifler from the aforementioned PIE series) was a fat, ungainly child who suffered Woodcock’s abuse. But Stifler uh, Farley became a successful adult anyway, author of a best-selling self-help book, Letting Go: Getting Past Your Past and a highly sought-after lecturer.
He’s out on a book tour when he hears his home town wants to honor him with its rarely-awarded Corn Cob Key at the annual Cornival. So he cancels his engagements to return home in some ways like a Thomas Wolfe hero. He wants to surprise his widowed mother, Beverly (Susan Sarandon), but the surprise is on him. You’ll never guess who she’s dating. If per chance you really can’t guess, then perhaps this film may be too much for you. But for the rest of us, of course it’s MR. WOODCOCK.
Farley spends the rest of the film in a competition with his former tormentor for his mother’s affections. To call the film predictable is, well, predictable. When Farley goes to the bathroom to urinate, he spies Woodcock’s whistle hanging there; everyone in the theater knew where the whistle is going to wind up.
When Farley breaks into Woodcock’s home looking for evidence that will cause his mother to break up with him, it’s pretty obvious that Farley will wind up under the bed when Woodcock returns his mom and the couple will wind up on top of it. And it turns out Mr. Woodcock may be appropriately named.
The funniest lines belong to Amy Pohler, who plays Faley’s book publicist, Marggie, and steals the film. She never met a drink or a man she didn’t like, and will do anything to publicize a client’s book except read it. She gets Farley a guest spot on Oprah and can’t believe John won’t return to the tour because of his mother.
“I don’t care if you’re granny’s on fire. If Oprah farts on a book it sells a million copies.”
This is director Craig Gillespie’s first film. His second comes out next month. It’s LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, about a shy man who meets his dream girl, a life-size doll. Is there a trend here? But I have the feeling there won’t be as many laughs with LARS.