Role Models Movie Review–It’s Funny. That’s What Counts.

It’s not hard to see why people might have a monster hate-on over something like Role Models—on its surface, it looks to be yet another crass comedy featuring a pair of losers whose lives suck almost as hard as the careers of the actors portraying them. And yet, despite the fact that both Paul Rudd AND Seann William Scott are involved, Role Models will manage to do the impossible and be a good movie.
Buddies straitlaced, bitter Danny and freewheeling ladies’ man Wheeler (whom we later find out is actually named Anson) work together pitching an energy drink to kids called Minotaur. Wheeler wears a minotaur costume, Danny wears a suit, and together they drive around from school to school in a pickup truck shaped a lot like a minotaur for the twofold purpose of keeping kids off drugs and hawking energy drink, sufficient quantities of which have been shown to turn urine a bright green. While Wheeler loves his job, Danny is beginning to hate life, wanting more from it. Eventually, Danny loses it under the strain and attempts to steal his truck back from a tow truck that was seizing it due to parking it in the wrong spot after his girlfriend dumped him. Danny soon after finds himself facing a bitter choice along with friend Wheeler—thirty days in jail, or a hundred and eighty hours of community service with a group called Sturdy Wings, a Big Brothers-esque sort of program run by a former crackhead.