Unfortunately, the guy just dumped by his girlfriend has only sarcasm to offer a bashful 16-year-old obsessed with medieval role play. Surrounded by annoying do-gooders, Danny struggles with his every neurotic impulse to guide Augie through the trials of becoming a man. After one day with the kids, however, jail doesn't look half bad. Upon their arrest, the court gives them a choice: do hard time or spend 150 service hours with a mentorship program. I was mentioning little Ronnie's attitude.Danny and Wheeler are two salesmen who trash a company truck on an energy drink-fueled bender. But to the point where we're thinking, hey, I sort of liked that. Not to the point where we're cheering, you understand. But since their problems were a little deeper than usual in this genre, our pleasure is increased a little. Remember that story a few years ago about some college students who were playing a fantasy game in the tunnels and sewers beneath a campus, and a few of them got lost or killed, I forget which?Įverything is satisfactorily resolved in the end, as the formula requires. The punishment is, they can't play anymore. When they are tagged by a sword, they are dead, and what is unbearable is that they are still alive to know they are dead, and listen to their enemies' scorn. What's interesting about the fantasy medieval warfare is that the players take it with deadly seriousness. Earlier, he and Danny had started to bond for the first time when Danny told him: "Remember, for every man in the world, there are two boobies, more or less." A troubled young man needs all the encouragement he can get. Ronnie helps to bring them back together after he accidentally gazes upon her "boobies." He is ecstatic. Twenty ounces, you see.) Anyway, Beth is sick of his anger and his dark moods. That's not Italian! (It's French, but she may have been saying venti. He shouts at her for calling a taller coffee a vingt. Then there is Beth ( Elizabeth Banks, Miri to Zack), Danny's girlfriend, who breaks up with him after he insults an Italian coffeehouse waitress. He rules this universe, and its members take him very, very seriously, even going so far as to fork-feed him and wipe his chin with a napkin at a pancake house. There are nicely drawn supporting characters, including the pompous King Argotron ( Ken Jeong). So these two terrific young actors go through all the steps of a formula plot, but a formula plot works if you're laughing at the plot and not noticing the formula. Thompson will have his own show on Comedy Central before he's 25. Not only does Ronnie know all the bad words, he can deliver them with the loud confidence of Chris Rock at full speed. Thompson), a sassy rebel who looks about 10 and hasn't had his growth yet. Sort of a combination of Dungeons and Dragons and pederasty. There are mostly younger teenagers and lonely men with mountain-man beards. Danny gets Augie ( Christopher Mintz-Plasse), whose life is entirely absorbed in a medieval fantasy game where bizarrely costumed "armies" do battle in parks with fake swords. The heroes are assigned a potty mouth and a nerd, but not like any you've seen before. I don't know why, but I have always found it pleasing to hear a pretty, middle-aged woman saying, "You can't bull- a bull-ter."ĭanny and Wheeler are assigned to be mentors in a Big Brother kind of program for young troublemakers. Sweeny ( Jane Lynch), the woman in charge of the program, could have been your usual Nurse Ratched type, but instead she's a brilliant comic invention, a former big-time cokehead from the Village with tattoos on her arm. They get in trouble and are assigned to community service.
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