Drillbit Taylor: Critic Reviews

It's hardly worth going on at much length about the movie, a disordered, dispirited shuffling of flailing-to-be-funny and trying-to-be-empathetic scenes.

Drillbit Taylor is so ploddingly directed and lazily written that it adds up to little more than a diffuse collection of second-hand gags and jokes, few of them funny.

Drillbit Taylor is as clunky and humorless as its title.

Here, Apatow produces a script co-written by Seth Rogen that, although not particularly objectionable, seems a pale shadow of such hugely popular watersheds as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Superbad.

The makers of Drillbit Taylor aren't so much interested in a movie about the tyranny of bullies as they are completely turned on by the violence they inflict.

Even if this movie doesn't quite hit the highs of its predecessor, it's nice to know that there are still filmmakers ready to respect the eternal struggles of freaks and geeks.

Watching kids being forced to pee on each other isn't actually funny. Neither is watching those same kids get chased down by a pair of thugs in a sports car.

The jokes are funny, the acting is good (especially the three freshmen) and the film has an underlying sweetness that harkens back to 2004's Without a Paddle, which was also directed by Mr. Brill.

It's no wedgie, but after a while Drillbit Taylor feels like its own form of torment.

Drillbit Taylor makes last summer's very funny Superbad look even better in retrospect.

The action sags in the middle, but director Steven Brill gets mileage out of some funny cameos and good one-liners.

Too much of Drillbit Taylor is the kind of formulaic free-for-all that does Wilson no good, nor anybody else.

If the film doesn't quite measure up to the Apatow gold standard, it's at least sterling silver.

Overly familiar, underwhelmingly funny and thoroughly predictable, Taylor is a one-joke movie that doesn't even get that one joke right.

Despite sharing a producer in comedy-genius-of-the-moment Judd Apatow, a co-writer in Seth Rogen and somewhat similar territory, Drillbit Taylor doesn't measure up to the raunchy classic that gave the world McLovin.

Setup promises a sort of modern Three Stooges takeoff that, unfortunately, is only haphazardly delivered.

Trying to mix farce with heart, Drillbit Taylor is instead as soulful as Kenny G and as wacky as public television.

Movies such as this remind us that Owen Wilson is nothing less than a national treasure.

This is Apatow Lite, a slapped-together series of sketches that are rarely funny and are often nastier than a movie aimed at pre-teens should be.

That so little of the movie bears the inventiveness, charm or rude energy of the team's last look at teen life suggests this particular well of inspiration has already run dry.

Wilson gets by on his delivery and his demeanor. It doesn't matter what he says; it's how he says it.

In Drillbit Taylor, produced by Judd Apatow, co-written by Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown, and starring Owen Wilson, the career trajectories of three comic talents converge to dispiriting effect.

A flimsy, unconvincing teen comedy from Apatow and company.

Do you hear that? That shrill, shrieking sound coming from your local multiplex? That would be the Judd Apatow machine slowly, steadily winding down after humming along so brilliantly for so long.

Given the uninventive, not to say downright repetitive nature of the narrative, about all Drillbit has going for it is Wilson's star presence. Or should we say his often agreeable lack of presence.