The characters: usually it's a good idea to make your protagonist a likable guy, but Scott is cloying when in successful-author-mode, and he's downright annoying when he's on his Woodcock-must-die tirades. (You also find out late in the movie that he was really annoying as a kid, too.) And no, the flick isn't gutsy enough to actually kill off Woodcock, because it's too busy trying to decide whether or not he's actually a nice guy. Violently abusing children can be funny, but it doesn't really make you sympathetic, so the late-in-the-game attempts to show Woodcock's human side (his dad was mean to him, see) just plain don't work. Amy Poehler shows up occasionally with some very-nearly-amusing lines as the agent, while Sarandon is unable to do much with a character that has no personality.

I often feel guilty about giving a comedy a bad review if I laughed while watching it. So to be sure, I laughed a few times during Mr. Woodcock. The spare minutes of funny material here, though, feel like wasted potential drowning in a quagmire of crap.

Movie Grade: D+

Synopsis:

Billy Bob Thornton, Seann William Scott and Susan Sarandon star in the outrageous comedy Mr. Woodcock. Scott stars as John Farley, a self-help author who returns to his hometown only to discover that his mother (Sarandon) has fallen in love with his old high school nemesis, Mr. Woodcock (Thornton) - the gruff, no-nonsense gym teacher who had put him through years of mental and physical humiliation. Determined to prevent history from repeating itself, John sets out to stop his mother from marrying the man who had made life miserable for him and his classmates.