Boys To Men
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday January 16, 2009
PAUL RUDD EMBARKS ON A QUEST FOR MATURITY. DAN KAUFMAN REPORTS.
PITY the poor Starbucks barista who has to serve Paul Rudd his next cup of coffee. After all, in his latest comedy, Role Models, Rudd's character flips out and starts abusing a barista who insists on calling a large cup of coffee a Venti - and it turns out Rudd, a co-writer on the film, penned that scene from personal experience."The whole thing with Starbucks and small, medium and large getting replaced with pretentious coffee-sizing systems is such a pet peeve of mine and I refuse to use their terminology and I've gotten into arguments with baristas over it," says Rudd, who previously starred in Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. In Role Models, the Venti incident becomes the catalyst for a chain reaction that involves Rudd's character, Danny, being dumped by his girlfriend and crashing a car on an energy drink-fuelled rage (his dead-end job involves promoting an energy drink to schoolchildren by saying it's safer than drugs). To avoid jail time, Danny and his sex-crazed colleague Wheeler (Sean William Scott) have to become big brothers to needy children as their community service, which neither they nor their charges are happy about. It might seem easy to dismiss Role Models as another gross-out summer comedy but it also features a sensitive performance by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who played McLovin in Superbad and has a cynical yet sentimental sensibility."The original script wasn't a comedy," says Rudd.The teenager Danny is assigned to look after is Augie (Mintz-Plasse), a geek who feels happy only when playing LAIRE, a live-action, medieval role-playing game. The film is filled with fight sequences in which the characters dress as knights while spouting arcane language. "You don't see it [medieval role playing] much in movies and if you could somehow make the movie like Braveheart and not make fun of it but instead try to capture the joy of the experience - that might be a good way to go," Rudd says when explaining the process behind the film.In an attempt to make the scenes as gripping as Braveheart's, Wain employed Jeff Imada, the stunt man from The Bourne Ultimatum, to co-ordinate them."It was just ridiculous," Rudd laughs. "If there's anybody that's just more overqualified for a job, it would be Jeff Imada on this movie because that guy is so good at what he does and then he would show up with these foam swords."ROLE MODELSDirector David Wain. Stars Paul Rudd, Sean William Scott, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Elizabeth Banks Rated MA. Showing now.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald