Do you think there’s somebody out there who loves Mr. Woodcock? An important query if ever there was one, I was inspired to ask it while channel surfing last weekend. Landing on Comedy Central, I was faced not with a several hour block of Scrubs* but this cinema classic.
If bland had a name, it would be Woodcock. That’s the only word that comes to mind when I think about it: bland. Nothing, not the characters, the story, or the visuals ever rises above passable or merely existant. Along with School for Scoundrels, Mr. Woodcock is part of an elite group of films featuring a slumming Billy Bob Thrornton doing battle with an unappealing lead character amidst an overall sense of beige. Have you ever felt beige? Like in your soul? I think it’s possible with these films.
Right before turning the channel, I stared into the murky beige abyss that was Woodcock and started to think: “Why would somebody make this movie? How could anybody like this movie? Wait…what if someone loves this movie?!” The very thought chilled my soul.
I mean, everyone has their guilty pleasures, and even the crappiest of crappy crap has its defenders. If I got locked in a room with nothing but a copy of The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift, I’d probably be pretty content for at least a few days.** I get it. But even the stars couldn’t get through this dreck without badmouthing it. WARNING! SOME LANGUAGE MIGHT NOT BE SAFE FOR YOUR PLACE OF WORKING! UNLESS YOU WORK AT HOME. THEN IT’S PROBABLY FINE!
I didn’t see much of this movie. Maybe 30% tops. I had to turn away. My mind could only take so much. The sad thing? This is not true of the aformentioned School for Scoundrels. I saw that shit in theaters. Not out of any longing desire to watch a Jon Heder film (he’s done, right? Like, I don’t have to look at him anymore? We can only hope), but because I had time to kill. How bad was it? Well, I snuck a sandwich into the theater and tried to eat it as slowly as possible just so I’d have something interesting to think about. Compared to School for Scoundrels, sliced turkey is fascinating.
I feel like these are the movies we need to stop. Not the atrocities of an Uwe Boll (whose Rampage I’m viewing right now. Possibly his best work, which is sad considering it’s mostly just footage of people getting shot), but the bland despair of…whoever directed Woodcock. Yeah, down with that guy.
*Which had ended just moments earlier, no doubt after a morning’s worth of MADtv and shame
**For the curious, my descending hiearchy of the Fast/Furious films goes Drift; 2 Fast; the original; the other one.