ometimes you really have to be grateful for what Judd Apatow has done. Thanks the immense success of his raunchy rom-coms like Knocked Up, Hollywood is cranking out R-rated comedies for adults again. Thank god! I was getting tired of all the PG-13 abominations. As a result of R-rated comedies being bankable, he’s also paved the way for talented independent filmmakers to finally get a crack in Hollywood. Last week Kevin Smith got a shot at the mainstream with Zack And Miri Make A Porno, this week David Wain has his turn with Role Models.

David Wain’s might not be as instantly recognizable as Smith’s, but he is a very underrated comedy writer/director/performer. Wain got his start on the 90s MTV sketch comedy series The State, which featured a large ensemble cast of friends who starting performing together in college. When The State was cancelled, the troupe broke off into two factions. One group went on to write and star in Reno 911, while the other created the independent film Wet Hot American Summer. Wain directed that film which bombed on release, but has grown to become a cult classic. He also co-wrote, directed, and starred in the brilliant, but short lived Comedy Central series Stella and also got writing/directing credits on last year’s vastly underrated The Ten (why that film wasn’t even released in theaters in Canada is beyond me).

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking right now: “Why the hell did he spend such a long time introducing the director of a silly glossy comedy?” Well, that’s because Wain is the secret ingredient that makes this film special. The emotional structure of Role Models is pretty paint-by-numbers and it easily could have been a terrible film. But thanks to the involvement of David Wain as a writer/director, the film is a surprisingly funny guilty pleasure that might just become a surprise hit. The movie stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as a pair of aging slackers who are forced to join a fictional equivalent of the Big Brother program. They each get paired up with a young boy and end up learning quite a bit about life and responsibility in the process.

That two sentence summary makes me want to barf, yet the film works surprisingly well. That’s because Wain barely pays any attention to the narrative and instead fills his film with as many hilarious actors from his unofficial repertory company as possible. Ken Marino, Jane Lynch, Kerri Kenney, A.D. Miles, Joe Lo Truglio all show up in small roles and steal every scene their in. For the leads, we have Paul Rudd at his misanthropic sarcastic best and Seann William Scott in his best Stifler role since Stifler. Barely a second of screen time passes without one member of this terrific cast causing the audience to keel over with laughter. Hell, Wain even gave himself a hilarious cameo role.