School for Scoundrels is probably a name you haven’t heard before, unless you were a comedy aficionado in 2006 or, like me, doomscrolled through Amazon comedies until you found an unusual movie packed with big-name actors. Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite, Billy Bob Thornton, David Cross, Ben Stiller, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sarah Silverman, Luis Guzmán and, in brief appearances, Jim Parsons and Aziz Ansari all make appearances.
With a cast like that, you might ask yourself: how have I never heard of this? Well, dear reader, the premise of the movie is that a nobody meter maid, Roger (Jon Heder), is a hopeless loser who pines after Amanda, the girl next door. His acquaintance, played by David Cross, informs him of a top-secret confidence class taught by one “Dr. P,” played by Billy Bob Thornton. The premise isn’t bad so far, yet when it sandwiches itself between the openings of Open Season, The Departed and Jackass 2, it becomes a tough sell.
What doesn’t help its underwhelming premise is the actual comedy. Even for the day, it’s rather uninspired in its use of slurs, rape jokes and gay folks being the butt of a joke, but today it becomes extremely tough to stomach. The “confidence course” becomes less about how to get the girl and more like a proto-“Top G” masculinity course.
What’s surprising is that the course actually works, at least to a degree; Roger ends up dating Amanda. That was not meant to be, of course. Roger becomes too successful in his endeavor, so Dr. P decides he must interfere and try to steal Amanda’s heart. Of course, as one does when you’re teaching a class on how to get the girl.
Roger attempts to thwart Dr. P by painting him as an old creep, which understandably backfires. Instead, Roger makes himself look like an overattached creep trying to separate Amanda from her newfound friend, Dr. P. This escalates to Dr. P staging a break-in at Amanda’s apartment and framing Roger, which understandably alienates him from her. It also leads to one of my favorite moments in the movie. As the camera pans across the destroyed, spray-painted apartment, it finally lands on Amanda’s poor dog, completely covered in pink spray paint.
To wrap up the movie, Dr. P pretends to throw in the towel and admit defeat to Roger, giving him two first-class plane tickets to visit Miami with Amanda. Upon Roger’s arrival at the airport, it becomes clear that this was yet another deception on Dr. P’s part. Roger eventually exposes the good doctor’s lies and betrayal to Amanda, and the movie ends with Roger getting the girl and the two heading off to Miami.
After learning remarkably little and somehow defeating the strange, predatory antagonist, Roger gets his happily ever after.
Retrospective
In 2006 this movie was unremarkable at best, disappointing at worst. Star-studded cast, including lots of stars who were yet to be, decent-sized budget, and right in the middle of Jon Heder’s hot streak of nostalgia classics, yet it flopped. It cleared $24.4 million worldwide at the box office, only doing a few million in its first week. Falling $10 million short of its budget, safe to say it was a box office failure.
Twenty years later in 2026, this is a rather tough watch. It had some moments. The spray-painted dog and apartment stand out, as does the paintball shootout where Roger rescues three of his “classmates” from Lesher (Michael Clarke Duncan). Another bizarre highlight comes when Lesher is abducted by Lonnie (Ben Stiller), after which neither character is seen again.
However, those scenes do not make up for the bigoted jokes, slurs, the generally distasteful nature of parts of the movie, the weak plot, and an even weaker ending.
This movie was Tragic. I expected much more from comedy heavyweights who featured throughout, and I was disappointed by the weak writing and even weaker jokes.