Who would have guessed Stifler could go so soft? Our old pal Seann William Scott from “American Pie” turns downright sentimental in “Mr. Woodcock,”
a reliving-middle-school-nightmare that’s often as obvious as its double-entendre title.
Scott dials down his abrasive lad- on-the-make persona, probably too much, in this hit-or-miss farce about a sensitive self-help guru who faces his worst fears when his mom (Susan Sarandon) dates the gym teacher who tormented him in those formative years.
Billy Bob Thornton, wearing a perma-glower glued beneath those ever- hooded eyebrows, is the title character, the jerk who hurls abuse and pieces of sports equipment at his phys-ed classes, students whom he addresses as “ladies” even though they’re boys.
His solution to any physical or intellectual shortcoming, from asthma to not understanding rhetorical questions? “Take a lap!”
Yeah, we all knew a Mr. Woodcock. But we haven’t all come home, in triumph, to small-town Nebraska to find Mom in the throes of a passionate affair with our middle-school nemesis, a man she plans to marry. That’s what John Farley (Scott) faces in the middle of a book tour promoting his self-help tome, “Letting Go: How to Get Past Your Past.” Naturally, he discovers he can’t “let go” himself, no matter how many people he meets who quote his own pap back at him.
This can’t-miss proposition often does miss in the hands of former TV commercial director Craig Gillespie, who lets his younger co-star dial it down and phone it in. Scott doesn’t let Farley melt down, and the script doesn’t give Woodcock enough of an edge. If the villain isn’t more apparently over-the-top mean, that gives away how this little exercise in dueling definitions of “manhood” will end.
And while the laughs are here, they aren’t sustained from scene to scene. It’s BIG laugh, wait, BIG laugh, wait and wait some more.
But Thornton, in a watered-down version of his “School for Scoundrels”/”Bad Santa” mode, is worth the price of admission. He never breaks character or breaks a smile.
Sarandon is here to give weight to the sentimental side of the story, the lonely woman dating a man her son is determined to keep her away from. Gillespie goes for something sweet here, but never finds the sweet spot. For “Woodcock” to deliver, the leads needed to amp things up, to least match the effort they’ve thrown at previous versions of these characters.
No pain, no gain, ladies. Take a lap!
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“Mr. Woodcock” ** 1/2
PG-13 for crude and sexual content, thematic material, language and a mild drug reference|1 hour, 30 minutes|COMEDY|Directed by Craig Gillespie; written by Michael Carnes, Josh Gilbert; photography by Tami Reiker; starring Billy Bob Thornton, Seann William Scott, Susan
Sarandon, Amy Poehler|Opens today at area theaters.
