The Film
Rod Kimble is a young man who is trying to make a name for himself in his small town. He never knew his true father, but has always believed he was a stunt man. Unable to grow a mustache, Kimble wears a fake mustache and cape to all of his poorly planned, unsuccessful stunts that he does with the help of his friends. Dave, played by Bill Hader, is his mechanic that keeps his beat up, under-powered moped working while Danny McBride’s character, Rico, builds the ramps. Kevin, played by Jorma Taccone, is Rod’s step-brother and ‘team manager.’ Eventually they’ll add Denise, Isla Fisher’s character, to the crew who acts as a comical love interest and motivator to Rod.
Rod’s step father Frank, played by Ian McShane, is a very harsh stepfather, but in a goofy comedic way. He’s a work out nut that is bent on always being able to beat up his step son, Rod. The fights are silly but eventually an explanation is offered later in the film. The real point of the film is raising $50,000 for Frank’s much needed heart transplant. Rod, who has a love-hate relationship with Frank, wants to earn Frank’s respect so badly by raising the money that he goes all out. With the help of his team and local AM radio station run by Chris Parnell’s character, Rod organizes a fifteen-bus motorcycle jump to raise money.
Much of the film leading up to the final stunt is short skit comedy showing Rod doing various smaller stunts at birthday parties and doing exercises to train and so forth. The relationship between Rod and Denise is very predictable and drawn out until the very end of the film, similar to other movies in this genre like Billy Madison and Talladega Nights. Also similar to those films, many attempts are made at comedy but fall well short of being funny; I smirked a few times, and chuckled even less.
High Flying Blu-ray?
The Blu-ray release of Hot Rod looks and sounds great, as it should for such a recent film. As expected, the 1080p visuals are crisp and offer nicely saturated, distinct colors. The Dolby TrueHD track does a fine job as well.
As far as extra features, there are several, but nothing outstanding:
-Audio Commentary – This track includes director Akiva Scharffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone.
-Ancestors Protect Me: Behind the Scenes of Hot Rod – Running eight minutes, in SD, this is a typical cast/crew interview collage with some behind the scenes footage.
-Home Video Footage of Orchestra Recording Session – Running just a minute and a half, this SD feature shows Andy and Akiva, as well as some other crew in the background, watching from a recording booth while an orchestra plays.
-Punch Dance – A two minute SD feature with Andy Samberg leading off briefly to the scene where he ‘punch dances’ his way through frustration. Most of this extra is a picture-in-picture of Hot Rod and Footloose, which contains the scene that Hot Rod is making a parody of.
-Kevin’s Videos – This is a four and a half minute collection of various videos in SD that Kevin apparently took of Andy Samberg, in character, running around doing various silly stunts and attempts at comedy.
-Deleted/Extended Scenes – A collection of fifteen scenes in SD that didn’t make the final cut. Audio commentary is available including that of the director, Samberg, and Taccone. All said, these fifteen scenes add up to right about fifteen minutes of additional content.
-Outtakes– About four minutes of various outtakes in SD.
Let’s wrap up…