CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 3/21/08

Multi-Generational Laughs

By david michael wharton

Working off an idea from John Hughes, Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown spin the tale of three bullied kids whose hired bodyguard proves to be more con artist than commando.

Drillbit Taylor

Screenplay by Kristofor Brown & Seth Rogen
Story by Edmond Dantes and Kristofor Brown & Seth Rogen

Buddies Ryan (Troy Gentle) and Wade (Nate Hartley) are excited about their first day of high school. It's a chance to put their previous nerd-dom behind them and make a new name for themselves. That new beginning takes a turn for the worse when they witness school bully Filkins (Alex Frost) shoving a tiny kid named Emmit (David Dorfman) into a locker and, despite his survival instincts screaming warning, Wade intercedes. Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, Wade and Ryan now find themselves as Filkins' new pet project, and with Emmit tagging along uninvited, whether they want him or not. As Filkins' reign of terror reaches new heights of torment and creativity, the friends decide on a desperate course of action: they take out a classified ad to hire a bodyguard. What they wind up with is Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson), a homeless eccentric whose only interest in the kids is in weaseling enough money out of them to make it to Canada. But as Drillbit infiltrates their high school as a substitute teacher and grows to care for the kids, the question becomes whether he will move beyond his desire for a quick buck, and whether Wade, Ryan, and Emmit can learn to stand up for themselves, Drillbit or no.

Drillbit Taylor began life as an idea by '80s teen comedy icon John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off), and screenwriters Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown have expanded upon an an idea every bullied kid has had at some point, usually around the time they're being hoisted up a flagpole or locked inside a locker room towel cage. Hughes retains a story credit on the film, under the nom de plume of Edmond Dantes, and we will leave you to draw your own conclusions about parallels between high school and wrongful imprisonment.

Rogen and Brown immediately make us sympathetic to Wade and Ryan. While already predisposed to be bully targets—Wade is skeletal-skinny, and Ryan is a pudgy kid with a loud mouth—when they first encounter Filkins, they're not on his radar, only because Emmit manages to be an even more helpless target than they are, being, as Ryan points out, the size of a hobbit. Wade's decision to step in and help Emmit is made on the spur of the moment, but the consequences could last his entire high school career—or at least until Filkins graduates. Wade could just as easily have stayed mute and avoided a semester's worth of urinal ambushes and other acts of terror. The fact that he does speak up places us squarely on this kid's side, and that he later stands up to the bully again on behalf of someone else only strengthens that conviction.

The script faces a dilemma inherent in its concept, in that the audience wants to see Drillbit move beyond his mercenary tendencies and beat the snot out of Filkins, but if Drillbit solves all the kids' problems, then Ryan, Wade, and Emmit's arc never really goes anywhere. Rogen and Brown handle this problem well, allowing room for heroic moments on the parts of all our protagonists and making Filkins a truly worthy adversary. Appeals to the bully's parents are useless; Filkins is an emancipated 18-year-old whose parents are an ocean away in Hong Kong. Appeals to the principle are similarly fruitless, with Filkins' visits to the office being defused by the bully's best Eddie Haskell impression. Even their own parents are little help, either believing the boys are blowing the abuse out of proportion or, in the case of Wade's ex-bully stepfather, insisting that it's all part of the circle of life.

While the film sometimes feels derivative of the thousand-and-one high school comedies that have come before, it still manages enough laughs to make it worthwhile, even if it never quite reaches the bar set by Freaks and Geeks or, well, the '80s output of John Hughes. Rogen's creative mind doesn't seem to spark quite as brilliantly with Brown as it did with his Superbad writing partner Evan Goldberg, but then again Rogen hasn't been writing with Brown since junior high. One stand-out sequence follows the boys interviewing potential bodyguards, and includes everything from a prospective thug trying (and failing) to prove his hardness by dipping his hand into a cup of scalding coffee to an appearance by Adam Baldwin, tipping his hat to the 1980 film My Bodyguard.

Drillbit Taylor might shine a bit brighter were Rogen's Superbad not so fresh in memory, but still manages some of the laughs and heart that made that film work, even if it's not quite worthy to share shelf space with the likes of Bueller and the Breakfast Club.

Drillbit Taylor
Paramount Pictures
Rated PG-13; 102 min. 

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David Michael Wharton is managing editor of CS Weekly and a contributing editor of Creative Screenwriting Magazine. Sadly, Owen Wilson never returned his phone calls when David attempted to hire him to beat up his own high school bullies.

Drillbit Taylor courtesy Paramount Pictures

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