By snoadmin
It’s not every day that I get an e-mail from a major motion picture studio asking me if I’m willing to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to do a press junket, so when I got one from Paramount Pictures saying that they wanted to fly me to New York to do the junket for the summer comedy film “Hot Rod,” I decided, “Why not?”
“Hot Rod” is the feature film debut of The Lonely Island comedy group. These three writers and comedians, Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, have practically reached cult status online with their popular video skits.
The success of their “The ‘Bu” skits (which mocked FOX’s “The OC” for Channel101.com) and clips from their rejected FOX comedy skit pilot “Awesometown” landed them a job writing for the 2004 MTV Movie Awards alongside “Saturday Night Live” star Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon was so impressed with the team’s writing and work ethic that he recommended them to “SNL” creator and producer Lorne Michaels, who gave them all jobs on the weekly live sketch comedy show. Samberg became a featured cast member, while Taccone and Schaffer became writers.
Together the trio began producing “SNL Digital Shorts,” which are prerecorded skits that run in-between the live skits. These shorts have been credited with saving SNL from a falling following.
The “Lazy Sunday” skit that Samberg did with Chris Parnell rapping about their journey to the movies to see “The Chronicles Of Narnia” has been downloaded more than a million times. Samberg then teamed up with Justin Timberlake for “Dick in a Box,” a skit mocking old R&B music videos where the duo encouraged presenting your loved one your “junk in a box.” That also became one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.com.
In “Hot Rod,” Samberg plays Rod, an amateur stuntman who has to deal with a jerk of a stepfather, Frank (“Deadwoods'” Ian McShane), who is constantly picking on him and beating him up in their weekly sparring sessions. But when Frank’s heart fails and he needs a transplant, Rod teams up with his stepbrother Kevin (Taccone), best friends Dave (“SNL’s” Bill Hader) and Rico (Danny McBride) and his hottie next-door neighbor (“Wedding Crashers'” Isla Fisher) to do a series of stunts to raise money to save Frank – not out of love, but so Rod can keep training to one day kick Frank’s ass in sparring.
Paramount flew me and about 30 other college journalists from all over the United States to New York to see a screening of the movie and talk to cast members. Putting us up in the swanky W Hotel in Union Square, each of us had our own king bedroom with $75 credit for room service.
After checking into the hotel, all the journalists met in the lobby and hopped on a charter bus to head over to a local AMC Theater to watch a rough cut of the movie.
The movie was funnier than I expected. The four actors had really great chemistry, and you could tell they were having fun improvising with each other. But at times the movie felt like it was skit after skit and lost its cohesiveness. The chemistry between Samberg and Fisher seemed a little forced as well.
After the screening, it was back to the charter bus to go to our dinner and after-party. We were taken to a fancy Manhattan restaurant with non-stop appetizers being brought out to the tables and a free open bar for two hours. Needless to say, most of the journalists and cast members got pretty intoxicated and socialized while talking about the movie and “SNL.”
The next morning, we met up for formal roundtable interviews. It was the cast’s first junket, and they were well-prepared. Samberg talked about his problems on the moped.
“I had never ridden any kind of motorcycle before, and I’m terrible on anything with wheels,” he said.
McBride said The Lonely Island group has comedy “down to a science.” Taccone was still shocked “they even let us make a movie.”
But their humility made them even more charming, and it’s that charm that will help make the movie successful when it comes out Aug. 3. There are no crude sex jokes, drugs or harsh language. “Hot Rod” is very much a major motion picture studio’s adaptation of “Napoleon Dynamite.” It prides itself on good, clean and quirky humor. Will that be enough to make it a summer blockbuster? Only time will tell, but the New York trip was definitely one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had at this newspaper.
