Drillbit Taylor

Drillbit Taylor

Directed by Steven Brill (PG-13)

High school freshmen hire a bodyguard to protect them from bullies.

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Owen Wilson is the only one making any effort in Drillbit Taylor, said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. In this “tired and misshapen” comedy, Wilson plays a hapless ex–Army Ranger hired to defend three dweebs from high school sociopaths. Produced by humorist du jour Judd Apatow and written by Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown, the film doesn’t get the laughs you’d expect from a comedy dream team. It goes to show that all those names “shouldn’t be treated as a seal of quality.” Tamped down for PG-13 audiences, the film never captures those moments of “unabashed, earthy hilarity” found in other Apatow projects, said Darel Jevens in the Chicago Sun-Times. The laughs are cheap, the jokes mean-spirited. The movie’s not quite as painful as a wedgie but “feels like its own form of torment.” Wilson is forced to go beyond the call of duty as the “only reliably funny thing” in the film, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. His “oddball comic intensity is shamelessly exploited” by a film that doesn’t deserve him.