Before he soiled his first pair of pants and smirked his way onto the cover of TV Guide, Andy Samberg made Hot Rod. In 2007 Lorne Michaels had the idea that if he gave a camera, $25 million and more than five minutes worth of film to the Lonely Island brigade that they could somehow throw together a movie that stayed in theaters for more than a month and could recover half of its budget. He was partly right; Hot Rod made $14 million in theaters, $1.5 million north of what my calculators says is half of 25. What Lorne also got was the seminal Lonely Island production and the funniest movie featuring a 30 second “cool beans” montage.
Hot Rod is the timeless tale of 20–something Rod Kimble, a self-proclaimed stunt driver forced to use his delusional powers of self-inflicted injury to raise enough money to pay for his dying step-father’s “conveniently priced surgery.” Joining Rod’s quest is his loyal crew; Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone (of Lonely Island), Bill Hader and love interest Isla Fisher (Wedding Crasher’s crazy red-head and Sacha Baron Cohen’s real life wife). If that doesn’t tell you just how funny this movie is, I don’t know what will. Rounding out the credits list is Will Arnett, Sissy Spacek and Ian McShane, Ian freakin’ McShane!
Though Hot Rod can easily be written off as a mess of overgrown adolescents running into walls (and it has… a lot), I’m going on record to say that Hot Rod is a brilliantly hilarious film. That’s right, I’m using ink and paper to put the words Hot Rod and brilliant in the same sentence. All of the random segways and uncalled for plot turns that are now a staple of the Lonely Island routine are amplified for the big screen. That means a scene can start with acrobatic punch–dancing in a wooded glen and end with a two–minute fall down a mountain.
Hot Rod is really an homage to the entire 1980s cheesy teen drama. Not a lampoon — homage. It employs all the old movie cliches not for high-brow mockery, but to tap into our collective knowledge of conventional story telling, and then add a farting noise. So yes there is something brilliant about a multicultural pump up montage that devolves into a city-wide riot. And I like the way that Ian McShane uses his own impending death to taunt his step-son. And you will too. Trust me.
