When people see a comedy, they often go for one reason, to laugh. Humor varies in many ways, it can be sweet, dark, thought provoking, mindless, but in the end its purpose is to make us laugh. So when a film comes along that makes us laugh frequently throughout the entire film, we tend to enjoy it more than other comedies. ‘Role Models’ is one of those comedies, a film that tries to throw as many jokes at you as possible and hits with almost every one. Every character is funny and every scene is funny, and even when a joke doesn’t work, you’re often too busy laughing at the next one to remember it. It doesn’t really try to teach us any lessons or enlighten our outlook on life, it just does what most comedies are supposed to do, make us laugh.

The film is about two men, Danny (Paul Rudd) and Wheeler (Seann William Scott) as they are frustrated with the irritating job of promoting an energy drink that changes the color of your urine. After Danny gets dumped by his girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks), Danny and Wheeler get arrested for trying to avoid a parking ticket and accidentally run over a school statue. Their choices are either 30 days in prison or spending 150 hours with a mentorship program. They agree to the mentorship program as they are set up by the group’s founder (a very funny Jane Lynch) with two of their strangest students. One is an obnoxious foul mouth named Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson) and the other is Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who is a dork in every meaning of the word. He wears a cape, has tiger striped glasses, and spends every ounce of his free time in a medieval role playing game.

Needless to say, Danny and Wheeler do not get along with the two kids, Danny thinks that Augie should stop playing make believe and get a life, and Wheeler doesn’t really enjoy having a little boy swear at him in between violent smacks to the face. Unfortunately for them though, the kids seem to like both of them. Augie likes Dan’s cynical humor and quick insults while Ronnie respects Wheeler’s constant attempts to party every moment he gets. Though the two “role models” seem to do nothing but encourage their bad behavior, all of them form a special bond that they don’t usually get from other people, and do actually learn a thing or two about responsibility. The nice thing is that it doesn’t in anyway feel forced. As these characters are learning these lessons they are still trying to make us laugh, throwing jokes at us left and right. At the same time though the film never gets so joke heavy that we can’t enjoy the characters or the situations they’re in. It all seems very smooth and natural.

The whole movie seems like that, very fluent, very clever, very well written, and of course, very funny. The humor does have a lot of harsh language and nudity, but that’s not what makes it funny. What makes it funny are the characters and the situations they’re put in. You know you’re in for a good comedy when literally a character just has to appear on the screen and you start laughing. They don’t even do anything yet, but you know that whatever they’re going to say or do is going to be hilarious. I don’t think any of them are actually good people, they just vary in different levels of rottenness. There is also bits of shock humor as well, but again it’s not done merely to shock and get an uncomfortable laugh out of us, it’s done because the writers felt it helped the story and would get a good laugh. These are the kind of comedies that seem to be slowly returning. Movies like ‘Tropic Thunder,’ ‘Baby Mama,’ and ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan’ all shock us not for the sake of shocking, but for the sake of comedy. Their concern doesn’t seem to be as much as getting people to talk about how disgusting or disturbing a comedy is, but rather how funny it is. And I have to say it’s great to see big funny movies start to make a triumphant return.

So who’ll like it? Fans of comedies like ‘Tropic Thunder’ and ‘Blades of Glory’ should enjoy a film like this. It celebrates the varying stupidity of its characters and the quick dialogue that they can produce.

Who won’t like it? People who are offended by bad language and some sexual comedy will not enjoy this. Some people may also find it uncomfortable to see the two boys learning such horrible lessons from their mentors, but just keep in mind that is part of the comedy.

My thoughts? This movie is just straight up funny. It knows how to deliver a joke and best of all it knows how to deliver a lot of them. Even the kids in the movie seem to know how to deliver their lines perfectly, getting a solid laugh with every cuss and every whine. While it’s certainly not going to set any milestones, ‘Role models’ is a perfect movie to go to for a few solid laughs, and that’s more than enough for this critic to give a solid recommendation.

Douglas Darien is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here or visit his website www.thatguywiththeglasses.com.