It’s Old School meets Anger Management, plus I’m assuming a good helping of the original British movie it’s based on, Billy Bob Thornton is in his badass Bad Santa / Bad News Bears type role, Jon Heder is Napoleon Dynamite again … Pushing Tin also comes to mind, the rivalry between Thornton and John Cusack there. But y’know, despite how much it resembles other things, despite how contrived it is at times, I really loved this. When it’s anarchic it damn near reaches the level of Fight Club or if …, and it has a streak of sweetness, mainly thanks to Heder’s performance (no matter how familiar it may be) and Christophe Beck’s music (the best I’ve heard from him, he’s usually pretty generic), that is almost irresistible. You really want this underdog to triumph, and the suspense over whether he will or not towards the end is practically unbearable. I’ll still be keeping my eye out for the original though, I have a feeling that one will really lighten my day … but I think there’s room enough in the world for both, and I’ll bet half the reviewers out there whining about “yet another lame Hollywood remake” haven’t even seen the original of this one.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 4:46 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.