Dan Landsman (Jack Black) is the self-proclaimed chairman of
his high school’s alumni committee. He
takes his job very seriously, and we get the impression that the rest of the
committee doesn’t like him very much.
When they go out for a drink after a meeting, they don’t invite
him. They’re working on planning their
20th reunion and they’re not having much luck getting people to
RSVP.
But one night, Dan sees a Banana Boat commercial. The actor in the commercial is Oliver Lawless
(James Marsden), the most popular guy in their graduating class. Dan decides to make it his life’s mission to
recruit Oliver to come to the reunion.
He figures if Oliver says he’s coming, the rest of the class will follow
suit.
This is a pretty interesting role for Jack Black to
play. Dan has a wife, two kids and a
good job, but he doesn’t really have any friends. And he tries really hard to get Oliver to like him - so hard that it gets
awkward and uncomfortable to watch. First he calls Oliver, who barely remembers
him. Then Dan flies to Hollywood to hang
out with Oliver, and I won’t spoil what happens, but it messes up Dan’s head
quite a bit.
As good as Jack Black is in this movie, James Marsden is
even better. He does a great job of
playing the cool guy and it’s easy to see why everyone in the movie wants to be
his friend. But the best performance in
the movie comes from the great Jeffrey Tambor.
He plays Dan’s boss, and I just love the way he’s a total luddite when it
comes to the internet and cell phones.
Dan lies to his boss early on and spends the rest of the movie trying to
cover it up. His boss doesn’t trust the
internet as it is, so it’s easy for Dan to evade every one of his boss’s
questions by invoking Google or something like that.
So why am I only giving this 2 ½ stars? This was a tough call, but I really didn’t
enjoy the movie very much. Even though
it’s an interesting story and the performances are good, I was just so
uncomfortable watching Dan be so pathetic and annoying around Oliver. It gets to the point where he yells at his
wife and son for daring to talk while Oliver is telling a story. I like awkward humor sometimes – most of
Ricky Gervais’s best stuff is cringe humor – but this movie wasn’t funny enough
to make up for it. I really felt bad for
Dan and wished someone would just take him aside and knock some sense into
him. So it’s a close call but I’m not
recommending the movie.
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