The New Guy review

So what's new about The New Guy? Not much, actually, and we'd be telling Porky's if we said you haven't seen it all a gazillion times before. But then what do you expect? Given that it's directed by the co-scripter of There's Something About Mary and stars one of the leads from Road Trip, you'd be a fool to sit down expecting anything other than the usual hi-jinks, pratfalls and gross-out gags.

Okay, so it does have a certain charm thanks to DJ Qualls, a scrawny dweeb of an actor who looks like he'd snap in two if you so much as shook his hand, but there's only so much he can do to sweeten the more sadistic elements of Ed Decter's comedy.

The tale of a high-school loser (Qualls) who hooks up with a jive-talking DJ (Eddie Griffin) and is instantly transformed into the coolest guy in class, it ain't exactly subtle - jokes involve midgets, constipation and mangled testicles. True, undemanding punters will get a kick out of the broad parodies (Con Air, Patton, Braveheart), "star" cameos (Lyle Lovett, Vanilla Ice, Henry Rollins) and a gratuitous scene where cutie Eliza Dushku models a series of skimpy swimsuits, but there's little here that wasn't done to death in Revenge Of The Nerds. And that was 20 years ago.