A ten minute gem stretched out to a lazy 87-minute goof. Hot Rod didn't score at the box office this past summer, despite Paramount insisting that all the kids who enjoyed Andy Samberg's, Akiva Schaffer's, and Jorma Taccone's "Lonely Island" short bits on the internet (as well as their work on Saturday Night Live) would naturally flock to this spoof of mid-80s action/musical/romance/comedies. And it's not hard to see why, after seeing who the producer for Hot Rod was: Lorne Michaels. In yet another instance of the Saturday Night Live impresario taking a funny three minute sketch idea and elongating it into a shapeless, stop-and-go excuse for a comedy, Hot Rod, while sweet-natured and genial, can't even begin to sustain its wafer-thin premise over its comparatively short run-time.

Samberg plays Rod Kimble, a twenty-something stay-at-home slacker who cruises (badly) around town on his beat-up little moped (the duct-taped seat was a nice touch). Wearing what looks like a cross between a super-hero outfit and stuntman apparel (complete with cape and paste-on moustache), Rod dreams of becoming a famous stuntman, just like his deceased father, who, according to Rod, use to do Evel Knievel's motorcycle jumps before Evel, as a safety check. Rod's other dream is to beat the living crap out of his dismissive, demeaning stepfather Frank (the talented Ian McShane, utterly wasted here), in order to earn his respect (the two engage in periodic, hysterical combat in their basement). Planning pathetic stunts such as jumping the city pool or a parked mail truck, Rod's stunning inability to successful execute these jumps is matched only by his miraculous healing abilities every time he lands in a pitiful crumple after each attempt.

Purpose, however, comes into Rod's life when Rod is finally told by his mother Marie (Sissy Spacek) that his stepfather needs a heart transplant (after supposedly 21 years of illness). Hoping to raise the fifty thousand dollars he needs for the operation, Rod is further spurred on to succeed by the reappearance of next-door-neighbor cutie, Denise (Isla Fisher), who is obviously taken with Rod's innocence and sense of purpose. Despite her creep-of-a-boyfriend's disapproval (Arrested Development's Will Arnett as Jonathan), Denise joins Rod's "crew," which includes Rod's nerdy step-brother Kevin (Jorma Taccone), dufus Dave (Bill Hader), and quasi-psychotic Rico (Danny R. McBride), helping him prepare for his biggest stunt in order to raise the $50,000: jumping over 15 school buses.

Hot Rod does come up with a few isolated gags that deliver some pretty solid laughs (the long fall down the hill, the stepfather/son combat scenes, the pay-off visual gag of Rod's final jump). But then again, it's not hard to laugh at someone smashing into a truck or RV, or getting creamed by a delivery van when crossing the street; the producers of Jackass have made millions off that premise. But the targets of satire in Hot Rod are far too easy for any real impact, and the laziness of the scripting and particularly the editing defeat much of Hot Rod's potential. For example, in quite a few reviews that I read last summer for Hot Rod, I noted how many reviewers were delighted with the Footloose "punch-dance" spoof that Samberg and Schaffer expertly recreate. And yes, it's funny, for a moment. But it's hard to wring true laughs out of a parody of something that was already a burlesque to begin with (I remember sitting with a 1984 theatre audience, which was convulsed in incredulous laughter at the truly ridiculous Footloose). And aiming at 1980s movie junk as a new source of ridicule is ignoring the fact that it was laughed at to begin with - and subsequently parodied ad nauseam in the past twenty years (the Hot Shots series crap, and all those anonymous Leslie Nielsen spoofs).

And it's not enough to call slipshod editing "ironic" and "modern" and "self-reflexive" for the text-messaging crowd, when in reality, it's just that: poor editing. Frequently, comedic scenes in Hot Rod abruptly end or peter out before there's any real payoff, while other scenes that have already delivered their laugh (particularly the "Introduction/I party" scene) grind on past their point (as well as telegraphing their jokes beforehand). There's no doubt that the people behind Hot Rod are funny, talented guys (Dick in the Box is paralyzing), but the dynamics, both in concept, timing, and execution, that work for a short internet or Saturday Night Live comedy sketch, don't translate into success for an integrated, cohesive 90-minute feature film.

That's why isolated bits and pieces of Hot Rod are quite funny, but taken as a whole, fail to jell. And the self-satisfied tone of Hot Rod, with Samberg and company making like they've just suddenly invented the non sequitur-filled, dead-pan, ironic brand of hipper-than-thou comedy, is a little grating, particularly when all of this so-called "innovation" is as old as the hills (a convenient starting point might be the Marx Bros., but you can go back even further to of course the work of Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin for strictly visual equivalents). Every generation thinks their comedy "heroes" invented a new form of expression (my generation thought the first wave of Saturday Night Live stars were groundbreaking - until they remembered the old Hope and Crosby pictures), but the cliché "everything old is new again" is a cliché for a reason. And you can make excuses all day long for Hot Rod's poorly timed gags, lame "ironic" inclusions (Scrooge appears at Rod's big jump), and the on-purpose pointless breaks with continuity (the "Cool Beans" hip-hop bit), calling them "hip" and "innovative" and "insider," but a year from now, with some distance, they'll just be another example of young filmmakers who didn't learn their craft.

The DVD:

The Video:
The anamorphically enhanced, 1.78:1 widescreen video transfer for Hot Rod is crystal clear, with a super-sharp, brightly hued and correctly valued picture, with no compression issues and blacks that hold.

The Audio:
Any movie that features a snippet of A Gringo Like Me deserves at least one star, and it comes over powerfully with Hot Rod's Dolby Digital 5.1 English Surround stereo mix. French and Spanish 5.1's are also available, and English, French and Spanish subtitles are also included.

The Extras:
A full commentary track is included, featuring Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone. They seem to be enjoying themselves, but as far as a helpful commentary, well.... Ancestors Protect Me: Behind the Scenes of Hot Rod clocks in at 7:57, and gives an overview of the film's production, with plenty of short snippets from the cast. There's an old adage in Hollywood that went the more fun a production crew had making a comedy, the less fun the actual movie turned out. These guys sure seemed like they had a lot of fun making Hot Rod. Moving on, there's a collection of deleted scenes running 14:39, as well as an outtake reel running 3:32. Kevin's Videos of stuntman Rod's exploits run 4:21, and there's a side-by-side examination of Hot Rod's and Footloose's "punch-dance" sequences, running 1:58. Finally, there's a home video snippet of the film's orchestra performing the score (1:27), as well as a theatrical trailer for Hot Rod.

Final Thoughts:
Spoofing crap like Footloose, The Karate Kid, and Burt Reynolds' entire 1980s output doesn't exactly take a genius, but the makers of Hot Rod manage to convince themselves that they've invented some new form of dead-pan, ironic, insider comedy - that's in reality as old as the hills. Genial, sweet-natured, with undeniably funny bits and pieces, Hot Rod is still much too lazy and unsure of its film technique to make a cohesive, sustained laugh-getter. Even labeling "incompetence" as "hip" and "ironic" isn't new, so there's not much here to recommend in Hot Rod. A rental might suffice if there's nothing else on the shelf, but overall, you can safely skip it.