The terrors of high school in Drillbit Taylor (Paramount)
I was going to leave Drillbit Taylor (opened March 21 throughour San Diego) to the Teen Critics, who did a fine job dismissing the film as "more stupid than funny" and not " completely horrible ." But then I came across this item in Variety : "Thanks to the prolific Judd Apatow, the reclusive John Hughes has made an under-the-radar return to the movie business." The article went on to reveal that one of the people credited with conceiving the film's story, Edmond Dantes, is none other than John Hughes. That's right, John Hughes, the king of teen comedies from the 1980s who slipped into oblivion before the new millennium. But Hughes had written a treatment years ago for Paramount that was given to Apatow and developed into Drillbit Taylor , a film about a trio of high school freshmen targeted by a bully and forced to hire a bodyguard for protection. In his heyday, Hughes created such popular teen comedies as Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . His films also gave birth to the Brat Pack of young Hollywood stars and influenced people like Apatow and Juno’s Diablo Cody who grew up loving his comedies. So in an odd way this proves somehow appropriate but it may also explain why I didn’t like Drillbit Taylor as much as Apatow’s other films.
