by Karyn L. Beach

Owen Wilson is an affable kind of guy on screen. Like him or not, he has an undeniable charm about him. However, that charm only takes him so far in the teen-comedy, Drillbit Taylor.

It’s the first day of high school for our heroes, the gawky and gangly Wade (Nate Hartley) and his pudgy and plucky best friend Ryan (Nate Gentile). There high hopes for high school are quickly dashed on Day One when they become the focus of Filkins (Alex Frost) a sadistic sociopath who manages to appear almost saintly in the presence of any authority figures. The boys, joined by another Filkins victim, Emmitt (David Dorfman), decide to hire a bodyguard to defend them. After interviewing a host of applicants, they settle on Drillbit Taylor, a former Army “Black Ops,” Special Forces kind of guy. The truth is that Drillbit is a homeless panhandler looking to make enough money to catch a plane to Canada.

I could go on about the plot as it does go on … and on, but like Drillbit Taylor itself, it wouldn’t be worth my time to write it or your time to read it. Suffice to say that the Wilson who made The Wedding Crashers such fun and Judd Apatow who’s hit repeatedly with hits like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad bombed this time around.

While there were a few good moments of physical comedy, the film drags between those few funny moments. What makes Apatow’s film’s so appealing is that they manage to be funny and sweet at the same time. This film succeeds at neither. It’s got as many funny moments as any run-of-the-mill sitcom. The difference is it’s three times as long. It goes for sweet but it just never really connected on that level either.

There is a painfully bad ‘rap’ battle that makes me cringe just writing about it. I mean, it was so bad, it made Vanilla Ice look like the white Tupac. Even a cameo by comedic character actor Stephen Root (Office Space, King of the Hill, Dodgeball) was uninspired.

It takes more than a cast of stock characters: the feisty fat kid, the geeky thin kid with the weird hair, the militaristic stepdad, the huckster with a heart of gold … to make a comedy. Apatow has known that in the past and breathed some life and originality into these typical characters. Now, he seems to be riding on the coattails of his past successes. Drillbit Taylor is not a ride I would recommend taking.