This Rod Gets The Shaft

Andy Samberg (SNL) stars in "Hot Rod," a new film being released in theaters this Friday. In it, he plays Rod Kimble, a man-child who wants to follow in his late father's footsteps and be a stuntman, doing amazing tricks on his moped. Naturally, he is terrible at stunts, thanks in part to his crew of idiot friends, including Bill Hader (also of SNL). This is a project from the Lonely Island comedy team (Samberg, Jorma Taccone who plays Rod's brother Kevin, and director Akiva Shaffer), the group that produced the "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box" digital shorts on SNL. Put all this together, and this should be a slam dunk, right?

Hell no.

A dumb plot (Rod wants to jump 15 buses to raise the $50,000 needed to save his step-father's life...so that he can finally kick his step-dad's ass and earn his respect) gets combined with lame characters (They either try too hard to pull off redneck cliches, or they try too hard to evoke Napoleon Dynamite - brother Kevin looks and acts like Kip, one guy's name is Rico, they dance badly, they have moronic quirks and mannerisms) to make a really lousy film. Most of the jokes tried too hard, fell flat, felt forced, or just made no sense. It was like one really bad episode of SNL, so save your $10 and just turn on the tv at 11:30 on Saturday night. I pray for those people in the audience yesterday who were rolling in the aisles. I guess drugs will do that to you.