School for Scoundrels: Critic Reviews

Director Todd Phillips tries for the kind of frat slaphappiness he applied so successfully to Old School, but these boys are less scoundrels than individual salesmen for the brands of Heder and Thornton.

Billy Bob Thornton's estimable talents are squandered in this shoddy comedy directed by Todd Phillips (Old School).

Charmless, uncomprehending US remake.

It feels as if director Phillips was scrounging desperately for morsels with comic potential and came up empty-handed.

The movie is bereft of any real focus or provocative ideas, which is a surprising result from [director] Phillips, the maker of Road Trip and Old School.

It achieves something previously thought impossible: It renders Billy Bob Thornton unfunny.

The movie wouldn't work without someone as nondescript as Heder, because you can buy him as a do-nothing, go-nowhere man; he's perfectly, wonderfully forgettable, appropriate for a movie like this.

Heder's looks and mannerisms are so inherently geeky that the post-transformation Roger appears to be less a lion with a hearty roar than a dork with delusions of grandeur.

Nice guys and creeps make it to the finish line, though I won't say how they place. But I will divulge this: The movie's a loser.

You want it to be over long before the needless epilogue that fills you in on how all these freaks turned out.

Guys are guys in Todd Phillips movies, for better or worse, but almost always for the purposes of arriving somewhere in the same ZIP code as the truth.

This ultimately disappointing comedy starts reasonably strong, delivers a few good laughs, then rolls over and plays dead.

Director Todd Phillips has become Hollywood's go-to guy for collegiate humor, and though this isn't as funny as his Road Trip or Old School, there are some choice sequences of the devious Thornton schooling his milquetoast students.

Despite the appeal of cobra-eyed Thornton and bunny-nosed Heder, Scoundrels trips early, and often.

Lame and formulaic.

There's too much familiarity in School for Scoundrels for it to be break-out funny. There are chuckles, sure, but they're chuckles you've had before.

There are a few amusing shticks, but School for Scoundrels fails to make the grade.

This unfunny comedy, a loose remake of a 1960s British romp, can't decide whether Billy Bob Thonrton's "teacher" is a hero or villain and thus every scene negates the previous one in tone and morale until the movie literally self-destructs at the end

This time the pace is so weak that long periods go by without even the whiff of a joke.

School for Scoundrels is a simply written, perfectly cast, sneaky-edgy, stab-yourself-in-the-leg-with-a-pen laugh riot.

School for Scoundrels is an exercise in advanced comedic embalming.

Is it a black comedy that isn't dark enough? Or a dumb comedy that isn't stupid enough, or a gross-out comedy that isn't yucky enough? Or is it really just a romance comedy that isn't sweet enough?

School for Scoundrels feels like a wasted opportunity.

A mean-spirited yet mushy comedy that deserves to be left back.

Ultimately, School for Scoundrels earns a failing grade.