The only impressive thing about School For Scoundrels is its failure to do anything interesting with a perfectly solid concept and cast. Sitting through Scoundrels is kind of like eating a wheat bagel with no butter or cream cheese. It isn't terrible, it's just tasteless and completely forgettable.
Scoundrels tells the story of a consummate loser, Roger, who is played by that guy from Napoleon Dynamite, John Heder. Roger has your basic loser job (he's a meter maid), your basic loser confidence level (he hides in closets when he sees cute girls) and your basic loser dilemma (he wants to get laid). One day after being kicked out of a volunteer Big Brother program for being, well, such a loser, Roger is pointed in the direction of an underground class designed for people "like him" taught by a mysterious guy named Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton). So Roger goes to the class and despite Dr. P's blunt, abusive and unconventional methods (notice I didn't say funny), Roger finds his confidence level has been bolstered and he's able to get a date with his cute next-door neighbor, Amanda (Jacinda Barett). All seems to be going well for Roger until he learns that Dr. P is "highly competitive" and making moves on Amanda. Needless to say Roger is mortified, but he eventually manages to summon his newly learned anti-loser abilities to combat Dr. P in the hope of winning another date with Amanda.
School for Scoundrels is based loosely on a 1960s film of a similar name, School for Scoundrels or How to Win Without Actually Cheating!, which was itself based on a novel by Stephen Potter. Both of School for Scoundrels preceding works can be most readily labeled as "dark comedies." The biggest flaw with this most recent Scoundrels is that it tries to exist in some nether between dark comedy and light or "silly" comedy. This issue can probably be traced to Scoundrel's director/writer Todd Philips. Philips is best known for his work on films like Road Trip and Old School, which are both movies I like well enough but are also films that principally get their laughs from light gag humor based on drinking, sex, slapstick or some combination of the three. Philips tries to branch out a bit in Scoundrels by combining his lighter gag style with a darker and more satirical tone. The result is surprisingly unfunny. Philips's attempts at witty social commentary dissolve readily and dully into the broad comic arena with which he is more familiar.
Scoundrel's onscreen cast performs admirably considering the material from which they were drawing. Thornton is more or less replicating his Bad Santa shtick, but at least he does the shtick well. Heder is also blatantly typecast and offers a toned-down (or castrated) version of his Napoleon Dynamite character. Heder doesn't do a bad job, but he's not quite the actor Thornton is, and it shows -- especially in scenes where Heder's meant to be the romantic lead. There's also a sizable and impressive supporting cast to Scoundrels, including the likes of David Cross, Michael Clarke Duncan (the big guy from Green Mile), Horatio Sanz, Sarah Silverman, Ben Stiller and a slew of small-time comedians many may recognize. The problem with the supporting cast is that its characters get almost zero development time. All we know about the people in Dr. P's class is that they too are "losers." The supporting cast ends up being nothing more than a plot device when it could have been a serious comedic force.
School for Scoundrels is either a dark comedy that needs to be way darker, or a silly comedy that needs to be way sillier. Whatever it should have been, the fact is that it isn't anything special. Scoundrels offers a few laughs here and there, but then again so does a 20-minute game of Scrabble. Skip this one unless you're desperate for an excuse to eat an entire large popcorn.
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