Pun Salad

Role Models got decent reviews, but I was not so taken with it. It's a combination of (a) a heart-warming plot you could find in any PG live-action Disney movie with (b) liberal doses of (as the MPAA puts it) "crude and sexual content, strong language and nudity." (Some of the strongest language comes out of the mouth of a 10-year-old black kid, which is funny for about three minutes.)

Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd play Wheeler and Danny (respectively), working for the energy-drink company "Minotaur"; they ride around in their Minotaur-mobile to school assemblies, Wheeler dresses up as a minotaur, and they present an anti-drug message leavened with a strong commercial pitch for their product.

Wheeler is the typical Seann William Scott character: a not-too-bright sex-obsessed goofball. While Wheeler loves the job, Danny is getting older, sees that he's going nowhere, and is increasingly bitter and nasty. As his girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) points out, he's a dick.

Danny finally snaps; as a result both he and Wheeler are fired, and they wind up looking at a likely jail term. To avoid that, they go for "volunteer" work at "Sturdy Wings", an organization that pairs up adults with maladjusted kids.

Now, see if you can guess whether (a) Danny and Wheeler, after some false starts, gradually earn the affection of their wards and (b) the kids, in turn, bring Danny and Wheeler around to feeling better about their own lives.

There's some nice stuff: one of the kids is a Live Action Role-Playing geek, and you don't usually get a look at that culture in a major motion picture. The great Jane Lynch plays the head of Sturdy Wings, and she could be funny reading the phone book. But even with that, it's not really worth going out of your way to see.

Consumer note: The original movie was R-rated; the DVD gives you the option to play the "Unrated" version which … I'm pretty sure would still be R-rated.