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Drillbit Taylor

Owen Wilson, Nate Hartley, Josh Peck

I love writer and director, John Hughes, even though he nearly got me killed one evening when I was in high school. His film Sixteen Candles was the Napoleon Dynamite of my generation. Every teenage girl in my high school hoped to find their Jake Ryan and every boy prayed that Molly Ringwald’s car would break down in front of their house. Just walking through the hallway of school we would toss dialogue from the film back and forth as if it was some code that older people could not grasp. One of the most popular lines was uttered by a foreign exchange named Long Duk Dong. “The Donger need food.” Today the line sounds utterly stupid and a wee bit racist, but it was part of the zeitgeist of the time. You would be standing at the check out line and one of your friends behind you would blurt out that line. There would be giggling all around, except for the middle-aged cashier, who would look at you like she was not getting paid enough to wait on such dorks. One of the guys in my class had an old 1950s or 60s pre-station wagon-like vehicle that he had spray painted flat black. I am sure he was embarrassed because the spray cans used to touch it up every few months probably cost more than the entire car, but looking back it was probably the hippest vehicle I have ever sat in. Plus, six or seven of us could pile in the thing without having to touch, because nothing makes a young male more uncomfortable than having any part of their body touch any other part of another male’s body.

Just after midnight we left the Century Theaters that would later become a lake during the Iowa flood of the ‘90s. Another night of being the most abhorrent movie goers possible, shooting spit wads through a straw at the screen and laughing at the genius of our own commentary. Like a pack of jackals, we were looking for some action to entertain ourselves but the city, for some unknown reason, was dead. Driving up and down Duff Ave, we were about ready to go home as we came to the lights at Lincoln Way. As we waited for the light to change, we had our windows down and it was stone silent, the perfect occasion to use the “Donger” line and bust up the whole car. At the top of my lungs, I spew out the line. What I did not notice was the young Vietnamese man in a British Union Jack t-shirt without sleeves sitting in the white Trams Am, with the windows rolled down, right next to us. At the exact same moment, we all for the first time noticed this long-haired young man idling next to us. In unison, we all turned our heads to look at him. He turned his head and looked at us. He then reached out his right hand as if to give us thumbs up and an instant later, there was the blade of the switchblade knife in his hand. Profanity and the words “go, go” shook the black metal beast as we plowed through the red light. I guess sometimes it is better to get out when you can rather than sit around and try to explain your own stupidity.

Still, I was lucky enough to grow up during the reign of Hughes. No one has ever, before or since, captured on film what it is like to be a teenager better. Even after 20 years, the films still hold up. The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Weird Science, Career Opportunities, and Pretty in Pink, along with Sixteen Candles, are maybe seven of the best films about what it is like to be a teenager in Midwest America. During the 80s, Hughes also pumped out brilliant comedies like National Lampoon’s Vacation, Christmas Vacation, The Great Outdoors, She’s Having A Baby, Uncle Buck, and Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. If that was not enough, he also gave the word the incredibly cute blockbuster Home Alone. John Hughes was the man, the Frank Capra of the 1980s, and then like that nothing. He stopped putting out films. From time to time a Hughes written project has popped up – the last being Maid in Manhattan in 2002 –but none of them have been able to recapture the magic that graced everything he touched when Ronald Reagan and Daddy Bush were presidents. Hughes has given me so many crushes and hours of dreaming of my future wives – Lea Thompson, Mia Sara, Molly Ringwald, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kelly LeBrock, Vanessa Angel, Jennifer Gray, and a busty, young Jennifer Connelly in a tight, white wife-beater t-shirt sitting on one of those storefront child-friendly motorized rocking horses. He also established the careers of the Brat Pack, John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, Joan Cusack, Michael Keaton, Dice Clay, Annie Potts, Jennifer Anniston, Gina Gershon, Macaulay Culkin, Chynna Phillips, Alec Bladwin, and John Candy. Where would Kevin Bacon, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Randy Quaid be without him?

John Hughes has never been given credit for how much he changed the world and influenced an entire generation, but by the 1990s he was making a string of cute family films like Miracle on 34^th Street, Flubber, Curly Sue, Dennis the Menace, and too many Home Alone films. Still, like Meg Ryan, I keep hoping beyond hope that he would make a comeback, reestablish himself as the premier Hollywood storyteller of American youth. Well, after six years of silence, he is back and is returning to high school after an almost 20 year absence with Drillbit Taylor. While he is not directing or producing this project, the script is his. John Hughes, oh my head was filled with the possibilities. What young female ingénue would I find to replace my beloved Lea, Molly, and Mary? What new wisdom would he drop on the youth of America? I was especially encouraged when I discovered that 3 other comedy geniuses were involved in the project. Seth Rogan (Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad) and Kristofor Brown (Beavis and Butt-head) worked on the script. Judd Apatow (“Freaks & Geeks,” “Undeclared,” Anchorman) was the producer. Comedy gold, right? A cannot miss, especially with crooked nosed, wrist-cutting, Owen Wilson (Wedding Crashers, Night at the Museum) in the lead as Drillbit Taylor. These are the new gods of cinematic comedy. Sure thing? Not so fast.

If you have not paid attention lately, bullying is big in schools today. I know, shock beyond shock, kids acting like Lord of the Flies, no way. Welcome to the playground. I know that every parent reading this column thinks that their child is a little angel, innocent and sweet, but when kids get together it is like watching Animal Planet, red in tooth and claw. Any little weakness is preyed upon. The most popular girl is always the meanest, performing her verbal gutting like she is Wolverine of the X-Men, and the boy who looks like he is about 25 is going to work out the issues of his home life on the chests and faces of lads a head shorter than him. (One of the most painful events that I witnessed was one of the popular girls in my class telling a poor girl that she smelled and needed to wear new clothes. The bully is now a missionary. I guess some things never change. One muscular bully in high school greeted me every day by punching me square in the chest – there are several occasions that I swear my chest literary swallowed his fist (and he claimed he liked me). But this is soccer mom America and we are now spending millions to try and stop this survival of the fittest. Taking a page from forgotten 1980s classic high school films like My Bodyguard and Three O’Clock High, Hughes’ newest effort focuses on bullying.

Three nerds, skinny Wade (Nate Hartley), rolly polly Ryan (Troy Gentile – Nacho Libre, The Pick of Destiny), and uber-nerd Emmit (David Dorfman, the creepy kid in The Ring franchise), on the first day of high school are confronted by a couple of bullies, 'Filkins' (Alex Frost – Elephant) and his sidekick Ronnie (Josh Peck – Mean Creek, Spun). Unable to stand up to the much bigger boys, the trio of geeks decide to hire themselves a bodyguard. The problem is they don’t have enough money to hire themselves first class protection. After placing an ad, they finally find some protection they can afford, Drillbit Taylor (Owens), a homeless soldier who is AWOL and is trying to make enough money to make it to Canada. Drillbit’s pal urges him to take the job so that they can case the kids’ homes and rob them. To protect his three new clients, Taylor has to go undercover in the school as a substitute teacher. Of course, things don’t go as planned and Drillbit has to have a love interest (Lesile Mann - Judd Apatow’s wife) . Of course, this leads to the age-old movie subplot of the hero having to confess that he is not who he claims to be and hoping that she will still love him.

Watching the film I could almost tell where the more contrived elements of John Hughes humor remained and where the more freewheeling comedy of Apatow and Rogan are present. While not as good as Superbad, the best comedy of last year, it is light years better than the average movie polluting the local cinema.

Verdict: A B/B+