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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Thin Is In
The New Guy uses lots of the old methods, but they work often enough.
By KRISTIAN LIN
Okay, so any movie that has Lyle Lovett being hit in the eye with a flaming marshmallow can’t be all bad. This happens in The New Guy, a comedy that isn’t all that new but has its share of laughs. It’s a profoundly conventional movie, one that, with a few changes, might easily have been made 25 years ago. Given the current state of teen comedies, however, this film’s reliance on old formulas comes off as somewhat refreshing.
After being terminally embarrassed in his current high school, Dizzy Gillespie Harrison (DJ Qualls) decides he’s had enough of being a spastic, uncool kid. When he briefly lands in prison because of a psychotic reaction to some medication, he gets lessons in cool from his cellmate (Eddie Griffin). On the outside, he gets himself expelled from his school and starts fresh at a new school as “Gil Harris,” a bleached blond with a bad-boy attitude. The movie engages in the usual rigmarole about whether Diz will carry on with his life as a cool kid or be true to his roots and the people who were his friends when he was a freak. It’s all carried out with a real lack of urgency.
The movie marks the directorial debut of Ed Decter, a co-writer for There’s Something About Mary. Like the Farrelly brothers, he’s sympathetic to freaks and geeks without quite understanding them. The main difference is that, although he does engage in some toilet humor, he tones down the raunch, all the way down to PG-13. Because he can’t rely on much shock value in the humor, he’s forced to concentrate on things like directing actors, timing jokes, and building momentum within scenes. The material isn’t always there for him: The parodies of movies ranging from Patton to Braveheart to Hannibal are mostly tiresome. However, it is there often enough. There’s a scene where Diz beats up the campus bully at his new school and then realizes that it’s gone for nothing because no one saw him do it. He’s forced to drag the unconscious and much heavier guy through the halls in an attempt to re-stage the incident in front of witnesses. The whole set piece generates a rolling laugh because of the director’s deliberate pace and the odd choice of Ravel’s Bolero as background music. (The symphonic piece stands out in a movie whose soundtrack is dominated by 1970s-style funk.)
Qualls, a rail-thin actor with strangely proportioned facial features, is often cast as a comic sidekick. It’s tough to think what other Hollywood projects he might headline, but in this movie, at least, he does creditable work in the lead role. His sidekick makes him look good for the wrong reason — without his stand-up material, Eddie Griffin is a leering caricature. Eliza Dushku is hot stuff (as always) as a cheerleader who falls in love with Diz. Even better, though, is Zooey Deschanel, who transforms the nothing part of Diz’s uncool best friend into a willful and forceful personality, someone you feel could carry her own movie. All in all, The New Guy won’t change the face of moviemaking, but Hollywood has done much worse with comedies like these in recent years.
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