听 
Contains infrequent strong language and moderate sex references"You can't help yourself because your self sucks. Helping your self means you're being helped by a complete ***hole!" yells Dr P (Billy Bob Thornton) in School For Scoundrels, a half-baked remake of an aging Brit-flick. Dr P's a take no prisoners life coach, whose most desperate pupil is timid meter maid Roger (Jon Heder, Napoleon Dynamite). But when teacher steals the apple (Jacinda Barrett) of Roger's eye, the gloves come off. All's fair in love and war鈥 and self-help classes.
Thornton shines as suave, slimy Dr P. He's a barking (mad) rotter whose pupils are just a vertebrae away from being jellyfish. Teaching them how to find their "inner lion" brings some big laughs, but this is really one of those tailor made trailer movies. If you've seen the ads, you've seen the best bits: Heder driving his meter maid cart, Michael Clarke Duncan in a blond wig and a paintball shootout that leaves no balls un-splatted.
"NEVER QUITE FINDS THE CONFIDENCE"
Everything else is just gift wrapping, with hit 'n' miss Phillips (the man behind instant classic Old School) unable to bring much comic life to either the one-upmanship or the central romance. The battle of the bounders never matches the far-from classic 1960 original, where Terry-Thomas played cad; meanwhile, a cameo for Ben Stiller as a disgruntled alumni of the self-help class is about as entertaining as root canal work. Like Dr P's class of cowards, School for Scoundrels never quite finds the confidence it needs to transform from zero to hero.
School For Scoundrels is released in UK cinemas on Friday 23rd February 2007.
听听
Bad beyond belief.
