Before you even get started reading this review, let me say that this is the funniest movie I've seen in decades. Now either walk away or continue to read.
Ya know, for years I've been waiting for a movie that sparked remembrances of the joys I had watching comedies as a kid, way back in the 1980's. I've seen plenty of funny funny movies, plenty of heart felt funny movies, plenty of funny slapstick movies and plenty of dry funny movies, but I've never felt like I felt watching something like Back To The Future or a John Hughes movie for the first time, nothing that totally got it perfect. This movie, to me at least, got it perfect.
In reviewing the film I think I need to review the reviews as well as I was sure I would see a lot more people agreeing with me than it turns out I did, and I honestly think that a large majority of the people who even liked the movie, didn't quite get what makes it great.
The subtle art of pacing is in such full effect in this film. I will admit that thru the first 30 minutes or so I was thinking to myself "when is this thing gonna kick in", then I realized that it had kicked in from the word go, it's just that unlike almost every movie made nowadays, it doesn't stop to let the joke sit in, it doesn't pander to the audience and say "here's the punchline, now laugh". I don't know if that makes any sense at all but it's the best I can describe.
For instance, in almost every other telling of this movie by any other writer or studio, the lead would be oblivious to himself, here he is not. He's fully as fucked and corny as say an Adam Sandler produced version would be, but in this film he fully understands how bad an actor and corny a human being he is, there isn't any need to hit the audience over the head with a sledgehammer and play him as a parody. This is not a caricature, this is a real man. A horrible, failed actor of a man with very little clue and I loved him because of his humanness, so much more than if he had been portrayed as say, Paul Blart, Drama Teacher.
The story itself is such a wonderful blend of parody, sarcasm and satire.
The constant barrage of humor, not just jokes, but humor, left me smiling from ear to ear thru the entire thing. At so many points I would notice little things going on in the background that not even halfway through I found myself looking forward to a second viewing just try and retake everything in.
Here's just one example of something I find amazingly brilliant and completely subdued about this movie. David Arquette, while not featured, is in quite a few scenes...and he has maybe 3 lines of dialog, all subdued. It's like when I watched Hot Rod and noticed that they had played about 10 Europe songs, and not one of them was Final Countdown. There is a brilliance to that level of detail in your comedy.
The story itself is told with such whimsy that it could, in fact, be right out of a John Hughes movie. The idea of writing a sequel to Hamlet is never odd to the kids, because well, they probably wouldn't know Hamlet to begin with, they just wanna put on a play because they've been inspired to put on a play, not because the teacher inspires or moves them as could have easily been done by autopilot script structure, but because despite the early parody of the "teacher inspires inner city kids" theme, in the end he's the teacher and they're in drama class, so they're putting on a play.
Now then, there's a lot of crassness in the movie, but unlike a film like Zak & Miri, I never cringed here, because every note is hit beautifully. "Raped In The Face", just feels right.
And so we get to the last 20 minutes. It's like Savage/Steamboat at WM 3. We've had this wonderful buildup, we've gotten to the match and it's been awesome and electrifying. And then there's the finishing sequence, which is just so blow away that you wanna rewatch it over and over again from the moment Savage goes outside to get the ring bell. The play itself had me in hysterics for the entirety of it. It encompasses all sorts of comedy from pure adult, to slapstick, to Elisabeth Shue deadpanning, to the comically absurd.
This is the best comedy I've seen in probably 20 years and I will kick my TV every time i see a commercial for Paul Blart, Mall Cop, knowing that it will probably do 10 times the business.
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