20260809-mr_woodc.txt

I'm talking about the 2006 Billy Bob Thornton vehicle. What a pile of
absolute shit. I saw this in my recommended section of YT for free
with ads. I have UBO, so no ads on that gluttonous site for me.
Obligatory Manifext v3 sucks. Anyway, it is an incredibly cruel and
unfun "comedy" almost completely devoid of laughs for anyone who
either is not a complete sociopath or has an IQ above 80. Mr. W. is a
PE teacher with less empathy than Stalin. He constantly treats his
students who aren't good athletes as less than vermin, repeatedly
humiliating and taunting them. A PE teacher for I believe a middle
school in Nebraska is doing this, not some "normal" kid who was never
loved. They could entitle it "Making a School Shooter" and it would
still have the same PE scenes.

Anyway, one of his pudgy weakling students (Seann William Scott) grows
up and sells a self-help book to millions, I think. Maybe not. Anyway,
he's going to be honored by his hometown so he travels back and does
some advertising. He soon finds out his tormentor, Mr. W., has become
his mom's new boyfriend. After catching up and realizing that a few of
his old friends feel the same way about him, while the rest of the
town lauds and has crushes on him (He's like 60, at least twice the
age of most of the characters, and is still unkind. Disgusting).
Anyway, Mr. W. asks to marry the main character's mom and she
accepts(?). It's filled with half-baked plans to expose Mr. W. that
obviously go awry, and it's only when his mom sees her fiance about to
pummel her son, holding him against a locker like like a TV movie,
that she rejects the engagement ring.

The worst part is that because W. makes Mom happy, this dope actually
helps get them back together and says it was a good thing that his PE
teacher tormented him because it made him hate himself enough to get
skinny or something. In the end, the psychopath educator gets married, the
pathetic whelp is at least dating the age-appropriate former classmate
who admitted to having a crush on a man twice her age now and probably
4x her age when they met as student and teacher, and everyone lives
happily ever after.

It's an abomination. Evidently if everything works out in the end,
it's OK to cause psychological trauma out of pure malice and hatred.
That's the message this movie endorses, whether or not it was supposed
to have a message anyway. It's awful. A much better darker and happier
ending would be W. getting murdered by the protagonist and the
protagonist gets away with it while his mom finds a better man
(evidently the consensus is she's hot and wouldn't have trouble
finding a man anyway). 

I had a visceral reaction to it because I remember hating it the first
time I saw it on TV or something. Another movie that's almost exactly
the same is another BBT film, School for Scowndrulls. Instead of SWS
being unfunny and disturbed, it's Jon Heder. And instead of the
protagonist's mom, Heder's and BBT's characters are both after the
same woman. It's pretty much exactly the same in terms of the broad
sense of the plot and I hated it for pretty much the same reason. And
they released in consecutive years. WTAF?

Ugh. I was very happy when I saw it had a ton of 50% or worse ratings.
But I was also angry when I saw people praising it. This is not just
having a different opinion. This is acting like that stupid shit movie
was a) funny and b) tolerable. I worry about the kinds of people who
actually enjoy a movie that is so cruel. I imagine they have a lot in
common with serial killers if they aren't serial killers themselves.

If you're going to have a shitty message, at least have a watchable
movie. I can't even understand why this got a theatrical release. It
had decent actors, not decent acting. I mean BBT is great at playing a
narcissistic asshole, but I think that's because he just is one in
real life.