Drillbit Taylor

As crude as parts of it are, Drillbit Taylor is surely the most "family-friendly" of the comedies produced by Judd Apatow and his cohorts.

Drillbit Taylor follows in the tradition of Three O'Clock High and My Bodyguard, turning the terror of a high-school hallway into fertile ground for laughs (and empathetic cringes).

Wilson is hardly the star of Drillbit Taylor. He is amiable but lacking much of his characteristic wit and energy. The real stars of this are Hartley and Gentile.

The movie shares DNA with a bunch of '80s teen flicks, but it's still funny, if not exactly filled with surprises.

Drillbit feels like an Apatow movie -- very funny, a bit crude and prone to veering in unexpected directions.

Director Steven Brill, best known for a couple of Adam Sandler's lesser features (Little Nicky, Mr. Deeds), follows the Apatow template and draws some assured work from his young principals.

What it sets out to do, and effectively so, is to wring some giggles out of the insecurities we all feel on that first day of school.

Nothing in Drillbit Taylor is even remotely real, but that doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable movie.

Drillbit Taylor is the least interesting thing about Drillbit Taylor. Once the movie realizes this, it finally takes off, becoming amusing if disappointing.

Drillbit Taylor should be retitled Superbad: The Early Years, since its high school freshmen heroes are destined to become the undersexed seniors of 2007's sleeper hit.

Drillbit Taylor is a guilty pleasure that's satisfying as a plate of junk food.

In the end, Drillbit Taylor is no My Bodyguard, and no Superbad.

There are plenty of funny bits here, and Wilson's charm overcomes his young co-stars' lack of charisma.

Drillbit Taylor presents nothing blindingly new for fans of Apatow -- or Sandler-style humor and when watching it, one can hear the faint rustling of old scripts being yanked from drawers for a timely cash-in

Owen Wilson must shoulder most of the comic load himself, a challenge that underscores his limited range as an actor.

It reworks not only movies like My Bodyguard but also a host of Apatow-produced films such as the much better Superbad.

There's just something weird about a movie in which the payoff has an adult beating up a kid (no matter how much the kid deserves it).

There are no surprises, but thanks to likable performances and a modestly clever screenplay it feels a lot less rote than it might've.

It's a Judd Apatow production that leans more toward the sweet than the edgy, more derivative than original. But it's still an amusing 90 minutes at the movies.

The familiarity wouldn't matter if the gags weren't so belabored and, thanks to the PG-13 rating, neutered.

The latest -- and, arguably, least funny -- of the extended family of Judd Apatow-produced comedies. It's not Superbad. Just sorta bad.

It can't quite settle on who its main characters are. This would be less of a problem if the movie were screamingly funny, but it's just a big pile of OK.

The linchpin of this contraption is Wilson, who still gets some mileage out of his soft-hearted stoner routine. But Drillbit Taylor is evidence that it's getting rusty.

For nearly its entire 102-minute running time, Drillbit Taylor strains -- for laughs, for credibility, for continuity, for something that will fulfill its potential. It rarely succeeds.

It aspires to the naughty sensibility of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and especially Superbad but at a level toned down to pass the ratings board's muster.

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

Except for a few genuinely unexpected laughs, so few you can count them on one hand, Drillbit Taylor is pretty dull. Not particularly bad, just dull.

Drillbit Taylor is the first film from the Judd Apatow Productions assembly line that feels like it came off an assembly line.

In the mildly funny, fully familiar comedy Drillbit Taylor, Owen Wilson gives the camera something touching to work with.

Owen Wilson’s easy-going brand of comedy is the best part of Drillbit Taylor, but the film really doesn’t do the comic actor justice.

Drillbit Taylor lacks legitimate heart and pee-your-pants laughs is that it's more intent on capturing safe, stereotypical movie character lives than real ones.

Drillbit Taylor may be the latest comedy from the Knocked Up/Superbad gang of producer Judd Apatow and actor/co-writer Seth Rogen, but the film emits a subtle yet distinct John Hughes vibe.

That Drillbit Taylor is co-produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Seth Rogen is temptation enough to consider this comedy about high school freshmen terrorized by bullies as Superbad on training wheels

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

Director Steven Brill's assembly-line tweener flick is a mutant clone of Seth Rogen's Superbad, full of the groin hits and urination-saturation situations guaranteed to produce hilarity -- in lower primates.

Because the filmmakers plant their laugh-generating derrick over the same comic well that's been pumped out twice before, Drillbit Taylor hits a dry hole.

Maybe it's all director Steven Brill's fault. Whoever shoulders the blame, this thing is a mess.

Owen Wilson needs to find a few other steady sources of scripts if he doesn't want to become the clown prince of B-movie land.

Drillbit Taylor does have a few fairly funny moments, mostly from the kids, but we get lost somewhere in the middle of the second act.

This high-school comedy about freaks, geeks and the bodyguard they hire to protect them from bullying is a disappointing hodgepodge of rehashed clichés.

Drillbit Taylor is as clunky and humorless as its title. The best that can be said of it is that at times it feels like a poor man's Superbad.

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

The weak Drillbit Taylor is doubly disappointing -- it's one of Wilson's worst movies, and it's the first big mis-step for the Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen freight-train.

Seth Rogen’s guided tour through his addled adolescence continues with Drillbit Taylor, a throwaway Apatow and co. joint (co-written by Rogen) that’s essentially a junior Superbad sans sex.

If the sight of 15-year-old actors beating one another to a bloody pulp sounds like your idea of a grand time, by all means line up to see Drillbit Taylor.

Drillbit Taylor is featherweight, family-oriented and forgettable, which means that in the rare context of films that usually infuriate me, I actually recommend it.

The movie feels like it's one long string of all the crappy deleted scenes from Superbad.

The role seems tailor-made for Wilson who again plays a self-aggrandizing dimwit who doesn’t realize that he’s an overblown jerk as he barges his way through life.

Watching Drillbit Taylor, an experience I hope to spare others, all I could think was: Jeez, they sure turned around this uninspired knockoff of the 2007 hit Superbad fast.

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 such an obvious rehashing of old ideas and laugh lines that it borders on the insulting.

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.

The script by Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogen and the direction by Steven Brill have a careless, never-gave-a-damn feel that's as insulting to viewers as the film is dull.

After maggots, warfare and the Black Death, few things are as depressing as failed humor. Hey, you can sleep through a bad drama, maybe laugh at a bad thriller, right?

Is the golden age of Judd Apatow already waning? With two more 2008 projects on the horizon, a final verdict may be premature.

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.

The seemingly unstoppable Judd Apatow laugh train derails with the painfully unfunny Drillbit Taylor.

A number of major corporations arranged for their products to be placed in Drillbit Taylor. They should ask for their money back.

Drillbit Taylor is another dreadful, not-funny Owen Wilson movie, in which Wilson is the best thing.