Role Models
These guys are not exactly who you want to have watching your kids much less getting them together as mentors, Role Models stars Paul Rudd as Danny and Sean William Scott as Wheeler in a fun look at mentoring.
Film making 20/25
Cinematography 20/25
Audio 18/25
Bonus Features 18/25
Total 76/100
Danny and Wheeler are two energy drink salesmen who get into a little trouble with the law when their sales truck is being towed away and they snatch it from the back of the tow truck. When the sales truck is driven onto the high school statue they get 30 days in jail or a chance to perform community service as mentors.
Danny is disillusioned with life and Wheeler is going to party his way through it until they are introduced to their little buddies. Augie is a little nerd who plays a live action role playing game and attends play fights in the park while Ronnie swears his way through the movie.
Ronnie is paired with Wheeler who ends up connecting with the kid due to his attraction to women and Danny connects when he sees Augie has no life outside his live action role playing. Danny ends up joining in the live role playing games and asks forgiveness of the King he would not bow down to before.
Ronnie and Wheeler end up being friends after Wheeler let him walk home from a party but his mother ends up forgiving him when Wheeler apologizes to her. They end up helping Augie fight the King when Augie is kicked out of his country in the role playing game with all four making up their own country to fight in the year end battle.
The movie starts out with a little over the top realism when it comes to the actors portraying real people but in the end work toward a middle ground of being caring about their new friends. When the court date approaches and both men give up their obvious chance at talking their way out of jail to be with their little buddies they make up for their missed court date by being there for Ronnie and Augie.
In the end they do stay out of jail by impressing the leader of the mentoring program with their courage to miss their court appointment to stand up for Augie. Augie does kill the King of the role playing game only to be killed by a girl he has his eye on but doesn’t care, she’s cute.
Role Models is a fun film with a few lessons in life thrown in here and there as well as some foul language not only by adults but by Ronnie as well. The movie shows that in the end friendship matters more than getting into trouble but let’s not get too carried away with this.
Role Models Blu-ray edition contains both the theatrical release and the unrated version which has more swearing and nudity. The Blu-ray comes with bloopers, on the set footage, a feature about creating a role playing world and more.
The additional features flow right into the character of the film with the great comedy that is not just off the cuff jokes but well written and performed comedy. The bonus feature of creating a role playing shows how they came up with the role playing game for the film and how they created their own based on real live action role playing gamers.
The In-character and Off Script feature is an in character commentary by three of the actors as they portray their roles in the film like actors do off camera. There is a BD Live feature that is more than the usual trailers available for download from the internet using a BD Live capable Blu-ray player.
The exclusive BD Live feature Inside Sturdy Wings is a look at the mentoring program created for the film but modeled after current real world mentoring programs. The feature plays out at the beginning like a commercial for the Sturdy Wings program but goes into how they created it for the film by film makers.
While this is the only additional feature through the BD Live this is how it could be done for more bonus content in the future. There is a lot of good extras but not a whole lot with some of it really good, some is not too bad and a few golden moments that are hilarious.
The film Role Models is a great take on how being forced into a mentoring program for some adults instead of taking a jail sentence can turn around on them and actually change their lives. In real life these kinds of moments may not come often enough but it is nice to see a film show this and not only use it as a great storyline but poke fun at it in a responsible way.
Role Models is another great movie that I had not heard of before it came out on DVD and Blu-ray and is well worth seeing. The Blu-ray edition contains enough extras along with the two features to make the purchase worthwhile and the movie is great fun for a more mature audience.