Mainstream studio comedy these days is pretty much ruled by the Will Ferrell/Judd Apatow/Ben Stiller/Jack Black set, and one of the benefits of getting into their racket is that if you can turn a standout performance amidst all the other overactive hams in these films, you are pretty much guaranteed a starring vehicle of your own as people like Seth Rogen and Steve Carrell have already discovered. The latest to take advantage of this stipulation is Isla Fisher, who came pretty much out of nowhere to steal a good bit of The Wedding Crashers with her lethal combination of hotness, cuteness, and great timing. It’s a shame that the first thing people saw her in afterwards was the mediocre thriller The Lookout, in which she played a preposterous, ill-defined character who basically disappears halfway through the film, but she’s already lined up a slate of more suitable comedic/romantic co-starring roles to get some of her momentum back. To cap it all off, she’s lined up her first starring vehicle which she’s also producing.
The Cookie Queen is story of a young lady who holds the all-time record for Girl Scout cookie sales. When she finds out a fifth grader is close to toppling that achievement, she sets out to sabotage her. Yeah. I guess this isn’t conceptually worse than any other studio comedy I’ve heard of recently, but unless you place pap like this in the hands of creative geniuses and talented casts, you’re guaranteed a cinematic
The talented cast part of the equation is unknown right now as the movie was just set up at Universal. The creative part is not much clearer as the script was written by unknown scribes Jeremy Hast and Ed Gonzalez, who just have an upcoming Vince Vaughn comedy over at New Line (Heckled) to their name. What’s truly unclear to me is why it takes two screenwriters to churn out formula like this, but maybe Azazel is in the details. No director’s attached yet.