"Knight Thoughts" -- exclusive web content
Seann William Scott, Billy Bob Thornton and Susan Sarandon are wasted in a limp comedy, with a big emphasis on LIMP
Wimp Dicks:
Mr. Woodcock
9-14-07 "Knight Thoughts" web exclusive review
By Richard Knight, Jr.
With Mr. Woodcock we have yet another movie that revels in the physical and mental humiliation of a nerd/whimp/underdog
(read: homo) for the sake of laughter.  Also again, the laughs are puny, mean spirited and rarely to be seen.  Billy Bob Thornton
plays the title character in what seems his umpteenth variation on his patented jock prick character (
School for Scoundrels was his
previous example).  Mr. Woodcock is the junior high school gym teacher who for years has mercifully pummelled and badgered his
male students while earning kudos from parents, school executives and townspeople.  One of his previous students has carried the
psychological scars of his abuse for years and has even written a bestseller about letting go of the past to forget the torture he
experienced.  During a book tour he decides to return to his small Nebraska hometown to receive an award and surprise his widowed
mother.  Once there he is shocked to learn that mother has become involved with nasty Mr. Woodcock who not only remains
unrepentant but has become even MORE of a prick as the years have gone by.

The "laughs" ensue when the writer (Seann William Scott) decides that he must prove to his mother (Susan Sarandon) that Mr.
Woodcock is a dick and in the process break up their engagement.  Once again, I fear that I am sorely out of touch with my times
as all around me in the theatre laughter rang out with each fresh humiliation that Thornton's character visited upon the writer played
by William Scott.  What am I missing?  Why don't I find it funny when a kid is hit in the face and knocked down by a basketball?  
Why two adult men wrestling to settle a score is anything other than creepy?  Or why the sight of Sarandon dolled up in a vintage
prom dress just isn't funny?  And what is she doing in a movie like this in the first place?  Did they offer her a lot of money?  She
she and Tim Robbins need to send one of their kids to boarding school or something?  Thornton I understand - it's his
"moneymaker," the schtick that producers hire him for.  He does do one hell of a nasty macho creep but it has the effect of dulling
his good acting; his three dimensional work in movies like the excellent
The Astronaut Farmer.  And as for William Scott.  He's cute,
hunky and has a winning smile but a movie like this reveals that he just isn't much of an actor and that personality will only take one
so far.  Even an excess of personality probably couldn't have saved a dismal mess like
Mr. Woodcock however which left me with one
overriding wish - that audiences tastes for this kind of thing change and the sooner the better.