Actually, Andy Samberg’s ‘Hot Rod’ Is The Perfect Dumb Comedy Movie
By Ted Pillow
10 Words or Fewer Summary: Wannabe stuntman raises money to beat up dying stepfather.
Everyone has a dumb comedy they inexplicably love, but I feel like my obsession with Andy Samberg’s Hot Rod is, well…explicable. Hot Rod is an absurdist (read: silly) comedy and it may take a few viewings to register — I thought it was hysterical the first time I saw it, but my friends sat in silence or merely chuckled at the excessive awkwardness of Samberg and his crew of pathetic friends.
But those same people that didn’t know what to make of the film still found themselves curiously drawn to it, and inevitably wound up watching it a second time and falling for its odd charm.
Most of these folks now consider it one of their favorite recent comedies, but based on the film’s lukewarm reception and relative obscurity, I think that might be more indicative of my group of friends than society as a whole (my college roommates and I became obsessed with even the most insignificant of the film’s many in-jokes, including seeking out and watching an extremely not-good 80s comedy called The Whoopee Boys that Hot Rod casually references). But to me, the film is a wonderful hybrid of kinetic slapstick and SNL-style asides. It also features early performances from scene-stealers Danny McBride and Bill Hader.
My favorite scene? It changes every time I watch it, but today I’ll go with a distraught Will Arnett screaming, “BABE! BABE WAIT! BABE NOOOOOO! BABE!” for an inordinately long amount of time while his girlfriend runs down the street and out of their relationship.
As professional film critic Peter Hautlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle puts it, “And yet beyond the ‘Jackass’-style violence and popular culture one-upmanship, there’s something that seems almost important about this picture. The creators have harnessed everything that’s good about YouTube and translated it into a big-screen movie.”
