![]() It’s joyously bizarre and absurdist, so completely divorced from reality and yet so firmly grounded in what I remember about being a kid, even though all the protagonists are older than I am. ![]() In fact, it never realistically addresses any adult concerns at all – it’s about a guy who doesn’t have a job or any apparent need for one, trying to impress his stepfather and his crush by doing low-stakes stunts around suburbia. (Their break-up scene remains an all-time great moment, thanks to Arnett’s performance and the expert use of comedic editing.) Nobody is ever in any real trouble, even though Rod’s stunts would seriously injure him in any other universe. Jonathan’s assholery is deliberately cartoonish, so we’re never concerned for Denise ( Isla Fisher) or compelled to take anything Johnathan says or does seriously. Rod’s low point, when he destroys both a projector and the projectionist’s car and has to give up the money he raised to pay for Frank’s heart surgery, only lasts for a few minutes before another solution presents itself. There is zero stress in the film, making it a solid escapist haven. Hot Rod is frenetic, unchecked silliness, and there’s something about that silliness that grounds me when I’m feeling like shit. (Well, except for Will Arnett’s gloriously dickish Jonathan.) They’re just a bunch of goofballs playing in their neighborhood, and I love them all so much that I legitimately get sad every time the end credits start rolling. It’s not mean-spirited, and the characters, though over-the-top, aren’t assholes. It doesn’t punch down, or really even punch up. That’s part of the reason why Hot Rod is a movie I keep going back to – its comedy doesn’t target anyone. Rod, Kevin, Dave (Hader), and Rico (McBride) are buffoons, but earnestly so – you could replace the entire cast with actual teenagers without having to change a single word of the script. To everyone in the film, there’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about a group of friends in their late 20s living like teenagers on extended summer vacation. Nobody really reacts to the fact that Rod and his friends are essentially 13-year-olds trapped in adult bodies. But the movie doesn’t dwell on that – Hot Rod isn’t Step Brothers, in which the butt of the joke is the idea that two grown men are behaving like spoiled children. He lives at home with his brother Kevin ( Jorma Taccone), his mother ( Sissy Spacek) and his overbearing stepfather Frank (a brilliantly grizzled Ian McShane). Samberg stars as Rod, an amateur stuntman stuck in perpetual adolescence. In other words, I’ve probably watched it four or five times over the past two months.ĭirected by Samberg’s Lonely Island partner Akiva Schaffer, Hot Rod is a spoof of 1980s extreme sports movies that also manages to simultaneously take place in the 1980s and the early 2000s. It’s my comfort movie, the cinematic equivalent of a sack of Oreos that I reach for any time I start to feel overwhelmingly anxious or depressed. Interestingly, Hot Rod is also the only one of those movies that isn’t horribly dated, and it’s the only one that I regularly rewatch. 2007 was a year of blockbuster chuckles, but unlike the aforementioned Judd Apatow productions, Hot Rod was not a hit. It was a crowded summer for comedies - Knocked Up was released in June to glowing reviews and incredible box office returns, and Superbadcame out within weeks of Hot Rod that August ( Superbad also features Hader in a supporting role and McBride in a brief background cameo). ![]() ![]() ![]() (Incidentally, Dick in a Box won an Emmy that year, which is absolutely wild to think about.) To be honest, when I went to see Hot Rod I was more excited to see Bill Hader in a movie it wasn’t until later that I became a Lonely Island fan and came to appreciate the chaotic majesty of Danny McBride’s performance. I only knew Andy Samberg from the Dick in a Box sketch that went viral the year before, and I didn’t know anything about his work with The Lonely Island. Hot Rodexploded into movie theaters in the summer of 2007, a halcyon year in which Spider-Man killed Topher Grace with loud noises and Transformersappeared to ruin movies forever. ![]()
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