Role Models is very funny, and even has a socially redeeming message, if you squint at it very hard. All of the actors in it are good at what they do, and that "McLovin" kid (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, he added, after looking it up) in particular could have a great career ahead of him if he can avoid being typecast as his generation's young Anthony Edwards. (On the other hand, that's not a bad career to emulate; the man keeps working.)Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott -- the men with two many double consonants in their names -- work for an energy drink company, doing school visits to get teenagers to buy their company's vile swill. One day, Rudd's high-powered lawyer girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) dumps him, and disaster follows on the job. The two miscreants are thus sentenced to a massive number of community service hours, which much be served at the (unseen) judge's favorite charity, a thinly veiled version of Big Brothers.
Scott's "little" is a black kid with a foul mouth; Rudd's is a LARP-obsessed pasty bespectacled teenage white boy. (No stereotyping there, no sir!) And the plot chugs along the expected path for about another eighty minutes, until everyone learns to respect and like each other and our heroes are all triumphant. But, since I did find Role Models to be very funny, I didn't mind at all. Humor is famously subjective, but I found Role Models to be consistently hilarious (as did The Wife), and so I'm moderately confident that people not too different from us will also enjoy it.
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