Mr Woodcock [Blu-ray]

I was really put off buying this with all the reviews saying how bad it was, but i bought it and watched it and can honestly say its not that bad. I thought it was okay, some funny moments and Seann William Scott and Billy Bob Thornton are very funny together. I would say its worth a watch.

Directror Craig Gillespie's debut movie before he went on to direct the amazing indie classic Lars and the Real Girl was this. Now he was replaced near the end of Mr Woodcock and a number of scenes were reshot by a new director because the first cut was considered too dark. This clearly shows in the finished film as there are some very dark comedy scenes that works great but then the movie ends with a rubbish conventional climax that you don't buy and feels very Hollywood. It is in the scenes when the film is really dark and raw and uncomfortable that it is at it's best, funniest and most original. If you like funny, dark, Indie comedies then you'll like parts of this. All the performances are really good with Sean Willain Scott and Thornton sharing some great chemistry and Susan Sarandon being very emotionally touching. The film backs out of the dark direction it is heading and the climax is a real slapstick Hollywood finale that fails. The film is not a 'Dodgeball' style comedy like it was sometimes advertised as but is (mostly) a indie dark comedy. There is some great dialogue and some excellent scenes and it's certainly worth a watch.
3 and a half stars.

The thorough review (for Amazon`s U.S. WWW site) by Lawrence Berbabo of "Mr. Woodcock" gives a very good idea of what the movie is about, so I shall not cover the ground anew that he traverses so well. I only would take issue with his low rating of it. I found the film amusing and well conceived, the acting excellent. Anyway, I am one of those fans who can find almost no wrong at all with whatever Billy Bob Thornton (as the stern gym coach) does for the siver screen. He, in the title role, and the entire cast make this tale of junior high physical education lived and relived very lively. Probably, in real life, the only teachers, as a group, who are as dreadful as gym teachers are math teachers; that applies, dismally, at the college and university level, as well. Teachers of both subject areas rated really, really low in my memories (and in those of a lot of other folks whom I know) of junior high school. (I was luckier in senior high school, where the math teachers were equally abysmal but where the gym teachers were quite decent men and instructors, but the experience of mathematics and physical education hit new lows, if anything, in my university years!)

Having lived too sheltered and pampered a life to have experienced anything so soul-trying and ruggedly harsh as military "boot camp" and the drill sargents or petty officers who train the troops thereat, John Farley (as Sean William Scott so comically plays the role) conceives, instead, of his past gym teacher as a cruel tyrant who has been the Great Personal Nemesis in his life and nightmares, which makes John`s horror on discovering that his widowed mother`s affection for Mr. Woodcock, as her exceedingly virile lover, will end in Woodcock becoming John`s step-father, a prospect that appalls the son.

Anyway, Mr. Woodcock gets back, from John Farley, some of what he deserves for what he had done to, ahem! so many athletically challenged pupils, such as John himself, in Woodcock`s highly disciplined phys. ed. classes. John, a successful writer of sappy motivational self-help books, whose mother (acted by Susan Sarandon) is romantically involved with Woodcock, has a capital opportunity to grow up (at last!), the hard way. The film really is worth a video rental, at least, really and truly! I would say that it`s worth more than that, too, so feel assured that it is worth purchasing.

And, yeah, I would toss any of John`s books of utter therapeutic pyschobabble into the fire, too, as Woodcock does to one of them at the end of the comedy!