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75Rod is played by Andy Samberg from "Saturday Night Live," who on the basis of this film, I think, could become a very big star.
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75For connoisseurs of stupidity, Hot Rod is that perfect delicacy: A silly movie about ridiculous characters that's also actually funny. Hilarious, even.
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75Just funny enough.
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75The fantasy here – dubious as life choices go, but great for a 90-minute comedy – is that you can stay 16 forever.
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75Hot Rod is a cousin to the comedies of Will Ferrell (for whom it was developed) with a younger skew, a kooky '80s nostalgia (complete with a pitch-perfect synthesizer score by Trevor Rabin) and a low-key amiability that keeps you rooting for Rod and company to triumph.
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A cheekily fun sendup of Gen X iconography.
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67Hot Rod keeps a sweet tone that's filled with affection for its characters, and enough laughs to become this summer's most mildly recommendable comedy.
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63A little like a leisurely surf through YouTube.
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63If the movie weren't so playfully dumb -- did you ever think you'd see Ian McShane throw Andy Samberg through a basement shelving unit? -- this would be exasperating.
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Wait until the best parts pop up on YouTube.
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Sure, it's funny, mainly because it's utterly absurd and meandering.
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50In what universe would you expect to see Andy Samberg, Ian McShane and Sissy Spacek in the same movie? You have to give the makers of Hot Rod credit for creative and unlikely casting. But the credit pretty much ends there.
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50An inferior "Napoleon Dynamite." Call it Napoleon Firecracker. The film steals one of the best laughs of Jon Heder's surprise 2004 hit, the scene where Napoleon nosedives over a bicycle jump, and stretches the gag into an 86-minute movie.
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50Samberg can't carry this, though director Akiva Schaffer supplies some hilarious, "Jackass"-style wipeouts and there are nice supporting turns from Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers) as Rod's love interest and Bill Hader as one of his goofball friends.
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40Unfortunately, the gags start to wear thin shortly around the 15-minute mark, not to mention the fact that they pale in comparison to the real-life indignities endured by the members of the "Jackass" crew.
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40Hot Rod is a stupid movie about stupid people doing stupid things.
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Like so many movies from the SNL factory, there are perhaps 10 to 15 minutes of good, gag-worthy material here stretched out to interminable lengths. Or to put it another way: It's a very small dick in an oversized box.
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40Those hoping for feature-length doses of Samberg's "Lazy Sunday" wit will have to settle for just plain lazy, as Hot Rod aims low and still manages to miss its target.
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40Only fitfully amusing. More often, it feels like a mediocre attempt to reprise the central elements of the infinitely funnier "Napoleon Dynamite."
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38I laughed, then I wished it was funnier, then I just wished it would end.
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38In fairness, the new movie from the Lorne Michaels machine does have its amusing moments. It's just most of them can also be found in "Napoleon," "Talladega Nights," "Eagle vs. Shark," and any installment of "Jackass."
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30There are enough laughs here to fill a five-minute skit but sadly, the film lasts a lot longer than that.
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30Hot Rod might be called the poor man's "Eagle vs. Shark" if "Eagle vs. Shark" were not already the poor man's "Napoleon Dynamite." It certainly lacks the conceptual purity and aesthetic integrity of the "Jackass" movies. In any case poor certainly describes the quality of the filmmaking.
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25Hot Rod started to go wrong at about the time someone in casting said, "You know what? I'll bet America's just about ready for the comedy stylings of Sissy Spacek."
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25Hot Rod never establishes its own personality.
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25Once again, something that might have been a faintly amusing sketch on "Saturday Night Live" -- maybe even a tolerable 30-minute short, had the writing been more clever -- gets tortured into the shape of a feature film.
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16The filmmakers lack any visual sense of humor and any talent for sustaining long-form comedy; the stunts have less wallop than a TV bloopers show and the Oedipal family slapstick goes around in circles, in more ways than one.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 41 out of 49
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Mixed: 1 out of 49
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Negative: 7 out of 49
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While this movie is not some masterpiece, the 80s music rocks!
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