Cool beans. Cool. Beans. Cool beans. Coooool beans. Kewl beans. Kooo-ul beans. COOL BEANS.
The final scene of Hot Rod is flawless. It cannot be improved upon. The staging is impeccable, the violence over the top, the last line unbelievable. The performers sell it so well while also being completely stupid. The camera is active but not flashy, and the editing, shit, man, they do a decent action homage by jerking the camera with the impact of the punches (it isn’t on the same level as Jackie Chan, but still much better than it had to be for a movie like this: see this video for Jackie Chan mastery). Sissy Spacek’s reaction shots alone would make it a timeless comedy scene, and she is one of a dozen performers just doing A+ work in this movie.
I think that the film (and the film’s comedy) works because it is a heartfelt teen drama at its core. Rod is a stuntman because his deceased father was a stuntman, and because he is good at it. And his story arc is that of a conventional biopic wherein we sympathize with the character’s humble beginning and watch as they grow into the __insert famous person’s occupation__ they were meant to be. The movie functions as this story. Its dramatic scenes have gravity because we care about Rod but also understand the reasons for his parents’ behavior (his stepdad is hard on him because he thinks that will get him to grow up; his mother hides difficult things from him because he can’t handle them, and tacitly approves of the stepdad’s strategy). Rod’s career struggles also resonate, because everyone can relate to imposter syndrome and to feeling like they are destined for bigger things but frustrated with how long it takes to get there.
However…
Our emotionally charged scene of Rod and his stepfather fighting is prefaced by he and his brother chanting “ancestors protect me” as Rod puts on a fake mustache. For the dramatic bus jump stunt, we get all of the trappings of a sports movie’s climax, but instead of local news crews showing the dramatic stunt, an AM radio station had exclusive broadcast rights, so Chris Parnell’s DJ narrates the events in between dixieland jazz songs. Rod and Denise have a functionally effective scene where he explains why he is quitting being a stuntman, but also, he is earnestly making the hand gestures from the MC Hammer song “2 Legit 2 Quit.”
The movie is packed full of these gags. It’s great!
In the same year of 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story used a similar approach to comedy by making an effective drama that incidentally is rife with jokes. And Dewey Cox has very good songs that function as good songs while also satirizing their intended target, be it Dylan or the Beach Boys or Roy Orbison, just as Rod’s stunts in Hot Rod look painful and insane.
There are obviously many ways to make humans laugh, and I don’t intend to suggest that what makes you laugh is better or worse than what makes others laugh. A charm of Hot Rod and Dewey Cox is that the dramatic arcs give heavy rewatchability for me, because sometimes one vibes with the jokes and other times one vibes with the narrative.
I wonder what comedies will show up in theaters after Lorne Michaels stops producing films? The gross-out teen sex comedies and topical spoofs (Not Another Teen Movie, etc.) will always have a niche, so there’s no surprise there. But I wonder if comedy will otherwise be relegated to the streaming services and episodic television, and that the mid-budget R-rated comedy (Fletch; Quick Change) is a relic of the past. I place no value in aggregates like Rotten Tomatoes, but many people do care (there is surely a reason that every movie’s Wikipedia page includes its Rotten Tomatoes score). Hot Rod fared poorly with critics at its release, although I’ve heard it spoken of in higher regard in the past decade. That didn’t help it in the theater, where it made $14 million against a $25 million budget. Yikes. There have been some comedies in the past decade that made bank, so maybe there is less doom than I had initially thought. Here is the all-time box office for comedies (not accounting for inflation): 13 of the top 20 have all been released since 2000.
Other 2007 candidates (good year!): No Country for Old Men; I’m Not There; There Will Be Blood; Juno; Eastern Promises; Hot Fuzz; Zodiac; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; The Mist; Walk Hard; My Blueberry Nights; 300
I turn 40 in December. To commemorate the milestone, I’m writing 40 short biographical essays pertaining to a movie per year of my life.