Really bored? Get ‘Screwed’

by Dan Eaton
THE POST

Screwed– nope, it isn’t a documentary about the making of Battlefield Earth. It’s a new Norm Macdonald movie!

Love him or hate him, Macdonald certainly has a distinct style. The man is the definition of deadpan. While this works in short sketches or small characters, it’s hard to build a movie around that personality (or lack thereof).

On first glance, this movie appears to be a typical lowbrow, pubescent boy comedy. A discerning film fan will notice that its written and directed by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the pair of writers behind Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon.

Unfortunately, a knowledgeable fan will also remember that the pair wrote the Problem Child movies.

The writers should stick to biographies.

Willard (Macdonald) is a butler/chauffeur/slave for Mrs. Crock (Elaine Stritch), a bitter, rich woman who owns a successful pastry company. He took the job on his dying father’s advice. He had the job before Willard did. That was 15 years earlier and Willard has received nothing but abuse and ungratefulness in return for his services.

She gives him a mincemeat pie for Christmas instead of a new suit (his suit was his father’s), and he snaps. He and his best friend Rusty (Dave Chappelle) plan to kidnap and ransom her beloved dog.

This backfires, and Mrs. Crock believes Willard has been kidnapped. She doesn’t want to pay the ransom, but her reputation begins to suffer.

The plan snowballs even more and eventually, Willard and Rusty hire a mortician (Danny DeVito) to find a dead, Willard look-a-like. More mistaken identities and kidnappings happen and the movie comes to a close in a tidy hour-and-a-half.

Screwed is stupid, but it does have moments of inspired hilarity. In one funny sequence, two small kids viciously mug Willard. One of the kid’s moms seeks out Willard and makes her son apologize. There is also a mini-twist at the movie’s climax that is disgusting, but hard not to laugh at.

Macdonald is wrong for Willard. He acts in his typical fashion, which is to say he doesn’t. Willard lacks the biting sarcasm that makes Macdonald funny. Instead he just plays dumb (assuming he’s playing).

Chappelle is always likable in the sidekick role, but does he have to smoke weed in every movie he’s in?

DeVito is better than this movie deserves as the creepy mortician with a Hawaii 5-0 fetish.

The oddest feature of the movie is the fact that the three schemer’s names are all variants on the names of presidents – Willard Fillmore, Rusty P. Hayes and Grover Cleaver. One of Mrs. Crock’s sidekicks is named Oswald as well.

The story is nothing new and should only be entertaining to die-hard fans of Dirty Work or Black Sheep. It can’t even reach the genre standard set by Tommy Boy, which sounds really sad when it’s said out loud.

To make matters worse, it puts Sherman Hemsley in bikini briefs.

On the bright side, and this can never be said enough, at least it isn’t Battlefield Earth.