The New Guy

December 10, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 89 min Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

How can The New Guy best be described. Let’s start with “yeeeeeecccchhhh!”. To just say that it sucks is nowhere near harsh enough. We haven’t seen a movie we enjoyed less in a long long time.

The New Guy

You’ve probably chuckled at the trailers for this movie. That’s because the trailers show Eddie Griffin. Unfortunately Eddie only has a bit part in this movie and is probably on screen for less than 10 minutes total. The movie does have a few funny bits, you saw most of them in the trailer. We did laugh outloud a few times during the movie. Unfortunately what was on screen between those laughs was absolutely painful to watch.

This is a movie and a script that just doesn’t work. DJ Qualls, the geek from Road Trip, stars here. He’s again playing a geek. Deciding he needs a change he learns some lessons from a convict, played by Griffin, on how to get people to leave him alone. In some convoluted way that isn’t really explained he goes back and forth to prison for training at will. That’s far from the last plot hole in this film.

In a comedy we can overlook a lot, as long as it is funny. This one is not, some of the bits fall flat and make you want to look away from the screen they’re so bad. The movie tries hard, Qualls does an excellent job of creating the likable geek, and there are some really cool cameos throughout the movie. But the bottom line is it is not funny. However, I must say the other 3 people who were in the theater were laughing a lot more than our reviewers. We speculate that they may have been high, which would’ve made this movie much more entertaining. Unfortunately they didn’t share.

Skip this one. We have reviewers actually threatening to quit if we make them do the DVD review for this film. One was quoted as saying that you couldn’t get him into a room playing this movie if you hooked his testicles to a sling shot and fired them at the door. It gets one star only because we have no lower rating.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 1 Stars, Comedy, DJ Qualls, Eddie Griffin, Eliza Dushku, Lyle Lovett, PG-13, Theatrical, Zooey Deschanel