Variety
"[ROLE MODELS] amuses throughout. That's in large part due to the stars, whose roles very much play to their familiar comic strengths..." 10/19/2008USA Today
3 stars out of 4 -- "Misfits and misanthropes are the heroes of ROLE MODELS, a surprisingly clever comedy....It is consistently funny, largely because of the sharp dialogue..." 11/07/2008 Los Angeles Times
"ROLE MODELS wouldn't be anything without Mintz-Plasse....[His] camera presence is at once unfailingly modest and distinctive." 11/07/2008 Chicago Sun-Times
"ROLE MODELS is the kind of movie you don't see every day, a comedy that is funny....There are nicely drawn supporting characters..." 11/05/2008 Entertainment Weekly
"The fun of ROLE MODELS is that it's a high-concept movie executed with speed and finesse and the kind of brusquely tossed-off scene banter that can get you laughing before you know what hit you." -- Grade: B 11/14/2008 p.50 Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "It's killer funny. Cheers to Paul Rudd...who takes just the right wry comic tone as Danny....Ripe, rowdy fun." 11/13/2008 p.100 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "The cast is good enough to make it all seem like snarky improv, especially Paul Rudd....ROLE MODELS is positively grinchy -- and all the funnier for it." 01/01/2009 p.56 Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t transcends its high concept through strong performances, filthy-smart patter, a winning affection for all its core characters and ability to hit its emotional targets without descending into slush." 02/01/2009 Hollywood Reporter
"[I]t's a self-improvement comedy that hits every beat on time....Rudd and Scott hail from different universes of movie comedy, but manage together here just fine..." 10/19/2008 Reel.com 8 of 10
Role Models, David Wain's third feature as a director and co-writer, may be the first of the erstwhile "The State" member's films to actually feel fully formed. Wain's first two films, Wet Hot American Summer and 2007's The Ten, felt more like collections of sketches and improvisational quips left over from sessions with his cohorts in "The State" and "Stella," his other cancelled sketch show, than classic, three-act-structured movies. These aren't necessarily bad qualities when dealing with humor. In fact, both The Ten and Wet Hot American Summer are much funnier overall than his latest, but the softening of content is traded for a comforting semblance of plot...As with his past two efforts, Wain's latest is headlined by the invaluable Paul Rudd, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Wain. He plays Danny, a spokesperson for Minotaur Energy Drink who spends his days telling teenagers not to do drugs with a fluffy Minotaur dancing behind him. Inside that jolly Minotaur costume is Wheeler (Seann William Scott), a co-worker who wants nothing more than to be Danny's friend--and get laid, of course. This comes as a surprise as it seems that Danny has no friends save for his girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks), and even she is beginning to tire of his "I'm wasting-my-life!" hissy fits. It's when Beth breaks it off that Danny loses it and tells a cafeteria filled with teenagers how awesome drugs are and how life sucks...Wain is smart enough not to play it all as B-grade Apatow, although he has a similar acting entourage that includes Ken Marino (who co-wrote the script), Joe Lo Truglio, and Reno 911!'s Kerri Kenney. Unlike the majority of comedy directors, Wain allows for the humor to play out with minimal token scenes. Proudly irrelevant and inconsequential as it is, Role Models is buoyant and funny, and has enough sense not to take itself seriously. - Chris Cabin
ReelViews 6 of 10
Role Models takes a familiar PG-rated plot and adds enough profanity and nudity to earn it a family unfriendly R. Sadly, an injection of raunchiness does not equate to an increase in quality and, while Role Models can boast the occasionally funny joke, there's little else to recommend this derivative buddy film. In fact, the storyline is so obvious that it needs a heavy dose of hilarity to save it from bouts of tedium, and director David Wain's hit-or-miss comedy lacks the consistency necessary to make Role Models appealing...This is yet another film in which adults bond with kids and, in the process, both members of the pair learn important life lessons. The cold, cynical adults come to understand the importance of unconditional love while the kids learn that all adults aren't jerks...The aspect of Role Models that keeps it from landing in the "unwatchable" bin is that some of the humor is genuinely funny. Wain's take on LARPing (which is essentially a live-action version of D&D with padded swords and no dice) is amusing and avoids the trap of being too condescending to those productive members of society who participate in this activity...Like far too many movies that bill themselves as comedies, I didn't find Role Models consistently funny or engaging. It's disposable entertainment at its most extreme. One of the things I appreciate about Judd Apatow is something that's missing here. Apatow takes cookie-cutter stories like this and gives the humor and situations enough of an edge that they work. That doesn't happen in Role Models. For a movie to succeed with a premise this feeble, the comedy needs to be more inspired than what Wain and his co-writers have scripted. This production falls into the category of the stale, generic R-rated adult/kid bonding comedy. Only those with an affinity for such things will find Role Models tolerable. - James Berardinelli
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