Tag Archives: Rob Corddry

November 22, 2019 · 2:21 pm

The Set of 400: #204 – My Favorite Free Corn Dogs Promotion

Today! Because there’s a bear loose in the coliseum! There will be no refunds! Your refund will be escaping this deathtrap with your life!

Semi-Pro (2008)

Directed by Kent Alterman

Starring Will Ferrell (x3), Woody Harrelson (x5), Andre Benjamin, Maura Tierney (x2), Will Arnett, Andrew Daly, David Koechner, Rob Corddry (x3), Andy Richter, Matt Walsh (x5), DeRay Davis, Josh Braaten, Jay Phillips, Peter Cornell, Jackie Earle Haley (x3), Tim Meadows (x2), Patti LaBelle, Ian Roberts (x2), Ed Helms (x3), Jerry Minor, Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig (x3)

The most underrated sports comedy in recent memory, Semi-Pro is basically a beat-for-beat basketball-based remake of #213 Slap Shot. I’ll admit that. Instead of the team on the verge of folding because of hometown financial distress, here it’s that the very real ABA is being acquired by the NBA, bringing the top four of its teams into the big league. Trying to fight their way into this select group is Jackie Moon’s Flint Tropics (the only fictional franchise in the movie), which needs to get their attendance number up to even compete, and that requires some gimmicks.

So, okay, is it the 70% knock-off of Slap Shot that bothers people? Because this is still a really funny movie. Sure, it does have the feeling of two different scripts slammed together into one movie – the wacky, Will Ferrell Jackie plot, along with Woody Harrelson’s over-the-hill former NBA player trying to get his old love life sorted out story. And they don’t mesh together terrible well, but neither is particularly bad. Plus it has that fun ’70s setting and a ton of great comedians filling out the cast – highlights including Will Arnett and Andrew Daly’s broadcast team of Lou Redwood and Dick Pepperfield, Matt Walsh’s ref and source of major abuse Father Pat, Jackie Earle Haley’s burnout winner of the halftime shooting contest Dukes, and Kristen Wiig as the bear handler. Continue reading →

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Tagged as Andre Benjamin, Andrew Daly, Andy Richter, David Koechner, Ed Helms, Favorite Movies Ever, Ian Roberts, Jackie Earle Haley, Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig, Matt Walsh, Maura Tierney, Patti LaBelle, Rob Corddry, Semi-Pro, Tim Meadows, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson

October 24, 2019 · 1:14 pm

The Set of 400: #225 – My Favorite Quad Streaking

Today! Because the Godfather himself has decided to grace us with his presence. This is his damn house, he sleeps twenty feet away –

Old School (2003)

Directed by Todd Phillips (x2)

Starring Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Piven, Leah Remini, Seann William Scott (x4), Ellen Pompeo, Juliette Lewis (x2), Craig Kilborn, Perrey Reeves, Elisha Cuthbert, Artie Lange, Matt Walsh (x4), Sara Tanaka, Sarah Shahi, Bryan Callen, Patrick Cranshaw, Jerod Mixon (x2), Simon Helberg (x3), Eddie Pepitone, Rob Corddry (x2), Andy Dick (x2), Terry O’Quinn (x2), Snoop Dogg, Warren G

Okay, so I was out of college at this point – well, between college would be a better way of framing it – but I was hardly the stable, mature grown-up my Twitter account would currently indicate I’ve evolved into. But I was also never particularly one for big raging parties – it’s pretty hard to throw epic, Animal House style shindigs when you live at home and commute to college – so my continued affinity of these sort of movies probably stems from a vicariously longing for lost times. I mean, I still hung out and drank my face off periodically, but I didn’t feel like I really had the true college experience, pretty much ever.

Sure, I’m fairly well hammered in these pictures (featuring sister-in-law Onion and American hero Mike Walsh), but I’m also fully 30 years old

Continue reading →

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Tagged as Andy Dick, Artie Lange, Craig Kilborn, Elisha Cuthbert, Ellen Pompeo, Favorite Movies Ever, Juliette Lewis, Leah Remini, Luke Wilson, Matt Walsh, Old School, Rob Corddry, Sarah Shahi, Seann William Scott, Simon Helberg, Snoop Dogg, Todd Phillips, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell

July 25, 2019 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #290 – My Favorite Insurance Convention

Today! Because I do a pretty convincing Omar from the HBO program, The Wire –

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Directed by Miguel Arteta

Starring Ed Helms (x2), John C. Reilly (x3), Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver (x3), Isiah Whitlock Jr., Stephen Root (x2), Alia Shawkat, Kurtwood Smith, Thomas Lennon (x3), Rob Corddry, Mike O’Malley, Mike Birbiglia

A movie that snuck in and out of theaters with little fanfare, Cedar Rapids is a terrific character-driven comedy about a rollicking business trip to Iowa as the backdrop to personal and professional crossroads. Director Arteta (of Chuck & Buck fame) compiled a fantastic cast of comedy greats, working from a script by Phil Johnston, who would go on to write a pair of tremendous animated films – Wreck it Ralph and Zootopia.

But yeah, this little indie – filmed through some tax breaks, I assume, not in Cedar Rapids, but the equally uncinematic Ann Arbor, Michigan (sorry, Wolverines fans) – didn’t crack $7 million total at the box office, and doesn’t seem to have a second life on cable, yet, so far as I can tell. Maybe there is a little too much adult melancholy surrounding the wilder sequences in the film – massive drug parties, semi-nude hotel shenanigans – so that it crossed up the marketers and the audiences alike. It’s hard to say the demographic this is aimed at, exactly, but probably not the age group who would really enjoy this type of movie – high-brow-ish masquerading as low-brow-ish. Medium brow? Is that a filmic delineation?