Hot Rod
Dir. Akiva Schaffer
Premiered August 3, 2007
The arrival of Hot Rod was, amazingly, my introduction to The Lonely Island, the Los Angeles-based comedy team that broke out of the local scene in the mid-2000s and, through Andy Samberg, brought new relevance to the long-running sketch program Saturday Night Live, where they appear to have been hired as a package deal. The team was at its peak at this time, with Samberg the breakout star of that SNL cast, and his appearance to promote this film on The Daily Show led me to check out his work.
Oddly, it didn’t lead me to seek out Hot Rod in the theater. Which isn’t that strange; I rarely went to movie theaters due to cost and the difficulty of scheduling with friends, and it wasn’t as if there weren’t other, better things to see at that time. And the advertising looked really stupid. But it got kind of an underground following pretty quick, so I ended up looking forward to seeing it now.
Samberg plays Rod Kimble, an ambitious townie whose late father was a legendary stuntman. Wanting to follow in his footsteps, he gets a team together (played by Bill Hader, Jorma Taccone, Danny McBride, and Isla Fisher) with the intent of jumping over fifteen buses on a motorcycle (one more than Evel Knievel) for a $50,000 reward. With this money he plans to get his violent but ailing stepfather Frank (Ian McShane) a new heart, saving his life so Rod can eventually beat him in a fight.
If you like Andy Samberg, you’re going to like this movie. Samberg is probably the only person in the world who can pull off the “bumbling braggart” persona and still be likable, and with the Lonely Island team behind him, the dialogue and pacing know exactly when and how to bring the laughter. The supporting cast is great as well; Isla Fisher is a general nice love interest with a gratuitously douchey boyfriend (Will Arnett), and Danny McBride plays his usual casually violent type, but the real standouts are Hader as Rod’s non-sequitur-dropping, drug-enthusiast mechanic; and McShane, who strikes terror into Rod’s heart but does it with a wry smile, much like his previous character Al Swearingen on Deadwood.
Hot Rod isn’t a great film by any stretch; at best it’s the second-best comedy film of August 2007– in very good company, mind you–; but it is perfect for what it is: a silly, goofy comedy from some silly, goofy people.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
Lonely Island sidekick Chester Tam has a minor role– he’d later take advantage of the 2007-08 WGA strike to create the miniature webseries How to Become an Internet Celebrity. Plus, there’s a lot of ‘80s nostalgia, with a soundtrack full of synth-pop and mullet rock.
Additional Notes
Sissy Spacek plays Rod’s mom, and she looks just like Shirley MacLaine here. I couldn’t stop seeing Shirley MacLaine.
How Did It Do?
Originally intended by and screenwriter Pam Brady as a vehicle for Will Ferrell, Saturday Night Live head Lorne Michaels convinced Paramount Pictures to retool the film as a vehicle for The Lonely Island. And although it has a cult of defenders, this turned out to be a bad idea. Hot Rod flopped, grossing a measly $14.3 million against a $25.3 million budget, and put off critics who tore into Samberg particularly, earning a 43% rating on RottenTomatoes.
Hot Rod’s failure worked out badly for everyone except the Lonely Island. Yes, their only other film, 2016’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, also flopped spectacularly; and yes, director Akiva Schaffer’s only solo directing credit, 2012’s The Watch, was tanked by its tangential relationship to a real-life tragedy, but the guys kept doing their thing on SNL to great effect.
Next Time: Mongol
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