Mr. Woodcock (2007)

Director:

Craig Gillespie

Writers (WGA):

Michael Carnes (written by) &
Josh Gilbert (written by)

Release Date:

14 September 2007 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Sport

Tagline:

Letting Go Of Your Past Is Hard... Especially When It's Dating Your Mom.

Plot:

Taken aback by his mother's wedding announcement, a young man returns home in an effort to stop her from marrying his old high school gym teacher, a man who made high school hell for generations of students. |

Plot Keywords:

Teacher | Divorcé | Prologue | Wrestling | Broken Engagement

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Billy Bob Thornton	...	Jasper Woodcock
Seann William Scott	...	John Farley
Susan Sarandon	...	Beverly Farley
Amy Poehler	...	Maggie
Melissa Sagemiller	...	Tracy
Ethan Suplee	...	Nedderman
Jacob Davich	...	Nedderman's Brother
Kyley Baldridge	...	Young Farley
Alec George	...	Young Nedderman
Joseph Michael Sargent	...	Young Watson
M.C. Gainey	...	Hal - Barber #1
Brent Briscoe	...	Barber #2
Dave Kuhr	...	Bookish Guy
Lisa K. Wyatt	...	Housewife
Kurt Fuller	...	Councilman Luke

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, thematic material, language and a mild drug reference.

Runtime:

USA:87 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | SDDS | DTS

Certification:

Ireland:15A | Singapore:NC-16 | UK:12A | Canada:14A (Ontario) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Finland:K-11 | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba) | USA:PG-13 (certificate #42285) | Singapore:PG (edited version) | Philippines:R-13 | Taiwan:PG-12 | South Korea:15 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Norway:10 (TV rating) | Iceland:L

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Avery Pix

Trivia:

The Ramona Dynasty Band from Riverside California was featured as the local high school marching band in 2 scenes.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the pizza restaurant, in one scene John hits the bowl of food and it's all over the counter, in the next scene, all the food has been cleaned up and is neatly back in the bowl. Not enough time had elapsed for the contents to have been cleaned then placed back into the bowl.

Quotes:

Maggie Hoffman: [to the flight attendant] Could I get a real bottle, please? I'm an alcoholic, not a Barbie doll.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Phys Ed Trauma Tales (2008) (V)

Soundtrack:

Sketches (20 Something Life)

a wheel-spinning comedy

"Mr. Woodcock" is one of those movies that sounds great on paper, but which loses something on its way to the big screen.

Jasper Woodcock is a sadistic high school PE teacher who, through the course of his career, has made life a veritable hell for most of the boys enrolled in his class. One of his students, an overweight kid by the name of John Farley, grows up to write a best-selling self-help book about letting go of one's past as a means of embracing one's future. When John returns to his small town Nebraska home for a visit, he's mortified to discover that this very same Mr. Woodcock has become his widowed mother's new boyfriend. Farley spends the rest of the movie doing everything he can think of to sabotage the romance, systematically violating all the precepts in the book that has made him so famous.

With few exceptions, "Mr. Woodcock" fails to exploit the black comedy potential of its material, settling for homogenized, crowd-pleasing pablum instead. That's not to say that there aren't some occasionally amusing moments in the film, only that they are too few and far between to turn the film into anything more than, at best, an average Hollywood comedy. Billy Bob Thornton, Susan Sarandon and Seann William Scott (Stifler in the "American Pie" movies) have all proved their talent and likability many times in the past, but they aren't allowed to go much beyond one-note performances in this film. However, it's nice to see veteran character actor Bill Macy ("Maude") again, very funny in his one scene as Woodcock's obnoxiously overbearing father.