DVD reviews: Role Models | Aña Uña

Published on Thursday 7 May 2009 16:02

Role Models (15) (DVD, £19.56; Blu-ray, £24.45) Aña Uña (15) (£19.56)

PAUL RUDD IS THE NEW JOHN Cusack. OK, I know they're roughly the same age and Rudd has been a movie and TV regular for nearly 20 years (thereby precluding him from being the "new anyone"), but with Cusack losing his way of late (settling for being the best thing in feeble bill payers; failing to recapture the genius of Grosse Pointe Blank with its confused, futuristic, semi-sequel War, Inc), Rudd has managed to slip effortlessly into that smart, snarky, make-anything-he's-in-appear-instantly-credible zone that Cusack used to occupy.

Exhibit A: Role Models. On paper this looked like yet another post-Judd Apatow raunch-com about adolescent men suddenly forced to grow up. And yes, that's kind of what it is, yet thanks to Rudd's presence as both star and co-writer, it's far funnier and fresher than it should be.

Rudd plays Danny, a misanthropic salesman for a high-energy drink that he pedals to schoolkids as a slightly less damaging alternative to illegal drugs. When his long-term girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) dumps him because of his inability to take joy in anything, he uses the occasion of a pitch at a high school to have a meltdown. This is much to the chagrin of his hormonally charged, relentlessly upbeat colleague Wheeler (Seann William Scott), who joins him in jail after Danny mounts the school's statue with their company's promotional monster truck. The plot kicks in when a judge offers them the choice between a month of jail time or 150 hours of community service.

Reluctantly choosing the latter, they find themselves part of Sturdy Wings, a mentoring programme run by a self-confessed ex-coke whore (the hilarious Jane Lynch) who pairs them up with a couple of socially awkward kids.

Wheeler gets 12-year-old Ronnie (Bobb'e J Thompson), a foul-mouthed junior Eddie Murphy; Danny gets Ronnie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a wallflower who retreats into the world of the battle reenactment enthusiast. Again, this makes it sound like it's heading in a predictable direction, and sure enough, it does, but in a way that's consistently funny and smart enough to ensure that when the inevitable character about-turns do happen they're adorned with enough offbeat detail and perceptiveness to make submitting to the film's profane charms easy.

In 1962 French filmmaker Chris Marker composed his brilliant science fiction short La Jete out of still photographs. Though the film's time-travelling, post-apocalyptic premise would go on to inspire Twelve Monkeys, Marker's ingenious, innovative approach to narrative film-making didn't really catch on. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has used it in the last 47 years other than first-time director Jons Caurn, whose debut film Aa Ua is a series of carefully arranged photographs of friends and family tied together with a fictionalised coming-of-age narrative about a 14-year-old Mexican boy (Diego Catao) who forms a crush on an visiting American language student (Eireann Harper).

In the wake of swine flu, that plot, with its celebration of Mexico's vibrancy, might retrospectively make the film seem like a prequel to an actual Twelve Monkeys-style apocalypse, but it's really an absorbing culture-clashing story about youth. Caurn weaves a deceptively complex tale around his central conceit, making us party to his characters' most intimate thoughts and cleverly contrasting them with what's happening around them.

What's more, in another nod to La Jete, the film even offers a sly meditation on the nature of time by showing how camera-frozen moments can still be full of life.