I have to admit, one of my guilty pleasures is seeing Billy Bob Thornton as a character like Willie in "Bad Santa". He strikes just the right attitude when he's playing your basic low life, delivering caustic barbs with precision timing. That's why I thought "Mr. Woodcock" would hold more promise in the witty one liner department where he gets to play a sadistic high school gym teacher, a role that virtually ensures a parody of similar minded gym teachers and coaches everywhere. Instead, the picture overdoses on the many variations you can come up with using the word 'corn', a veritable cornucopia of corny jokes as it were. See what I mean, there was a lot of that.
Too bad, because the flick held a lot more promise than what it actually delivered, even though I found myself laughing out loud a few times, even once un-corn-trollably. That was when Woodcock took the gurney dive head first into the asphalt, a move that topped even a well placed basketball to the groin, which anyone who ever had a coach like Woodcock would have seen coming a mile away.
You know, as I think back to my own high school days, I had a gym teacher who was a bit like Mr. Woodcock when you come right down to it. He weighed two thirty and was built like a brick wall, crew cut hair and a menacing deadpan look just like Thornton's character. His name was Mr. Green and one of his favorite activities was the rope climb to the ceiling of the gym. If this sounds vaguely familiar to anyone reading this, we might have been in the same gym class together. Drop me a line. And Mr. Green - if you're reading this, I'll deny every word of it.
Too bad, because the flick held a lot more promise than what it actually delivered, even though I found myself laughing out loud a few times, even once un-corn-trollably. That was when Woodcock took the gurney dive head first into the asphalt, a move that topped even a well placed basketball to the groin, which anyone who ever had a coach like Woodcock would have seen coming a mile away.
You know, as I think back to my own high school days, I had a gym teacher who was a bit like Mr. Woodcock when you come right down to it. He weighed two thirty and was built like a brick wall, crew cut hair and a menacing deadpan look just like Thornton's character. His name was Mr. Green and one of his favorite activities was the rope climb to the ceiling of the gym. If this sounds vaguely familiar to anyone reading this, we might have been in the same gym class together. Drop me a line. And Mr. Green - if you're reading this, I'll deny every word of it.