Roger (Jon Heder) lacks self-esteem. He doesn’t find any self-worth from his job as a New York Parking Authority officer. He looks to volunteering at the local rec center as a Big Brother but the kids don’t like him. He can’t work up the courage to ask his cute neighbor, Amanda (Jacinda Barrett), out on a date. Feeling totally defeated by life, he finds possible hope in a class run by Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton). Dr. P promises to make Roger and others like him into “lions who take what they want.”
Using the techniques he learns from the class, Roger confronts a bully at work and asks Amanda out on a date. He begins to feel good about himself but he also initiates a competition of sorts between himself and Dr. P, which quickly escalates into something he wasn’t expecting.
Director and co-writer Todd Phillips, who recently helmed Old School and Starsky & Hutch, doesn’t seem to know where to take School for Scoundrels. When the focus of the movie turns from the class as a whole to the competition between Dr. P. and Roger, it becomes a series of one-upmanship scenarios that gets tiresome fairly quickly. The ultimate payoff isn’t worth the tedium.
Also at question is the choice of casting Jon Heder as Roger. Best known as Napoleon Dynamite, Heder isn’t bad in the role. Quite the opposite, actually. He doesn’t come across as the incredible loser that the movie requires to justify his enrollment in the class. Heder makes the character far more sympathetic than he should be in this case. You want the other characters in the movie to stop being mean to him. Both the script and Heder’s performance make it seem like Roger’s biggest problem isn’t himself but the people around him.
There are some laughs in School for Scoundrels but they’re not worth a full-price ticket. Wait for the DVD or catch it on cable.
2.5 out of 5.0 stars
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