Obviously I love Owen Wilson. You all know that. So, it should come as no
surprise that I went to see his new movie Drillbit Taylor Saturday night. By myself.
Yes, I went alone because I knew no one would go with me! That's how strong my love
is! Well, I thought it was funny. And sweet and silly. Mostly funny. I'd recommend it......but! I know you guys want some objective insight, not my rose tinted review. So!
Check out the review from respected film review source, Ain'tItCool.com:

"If you go see DRILLBIT TAYLOR, you might notice that Edmond Dantes is given a co-story credit.

Edmond Dantes, you may or may not know, is John Hughes, '80s teen comedy demigod, and DRILLBIT TAYLOR was one of many treatments he wrote during his overall production deal with Paramount. Hughes was a machine when he was working at his peak. He came from the world of advertising before he was a filmmaker, and his time writing short fiction for NATIONAL LAMPOON really served him well when cranking out treatments and scripts for a production deal. I love that there are Hughes treatments that are still floating around out there, like little John Hughes seeds that haven't been planted yet. In this particular case, Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown worked together to turn this Hughes idea into... something that pretty closely resembles second-tier John Hughes movies from back in the day.

And that is no insult, my friends. Not where I come from.

I don't think DRILLBIT works completely. But I don't think a lot of John Hughes films are perfect, either. That doesn't mean they are without charm or laughs. DRILLBIT gets a lot of goodwill from me because they found the right kids. They're not movie slick. They're real, and they've got a good sense of rapport. I'm mentioning this because it's going to be real important in the next review as well. Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile, and the strange and tiny David Dorfman all work really well as friends. Steven Brill has taken his fair share of critical shit for films like WITHOUT A PADDLE, LITTLE NICKY, or MR DEEDS, but I think he's got a knack with young actors. His first film, HEAVY WEIGHTS, had a lot of really good kid performances in it, and he does nice work with that lead trio in particular here.

The biggest problem with Owen Wilson films is the same problem that Jim Carrey films have these days: they're just too goddamn underwritten. You can't just rely on Owen Wilson's Owen Wilson-ness to carry the day every time. He can't make mediocre material great simply by being Owen Wilson. His very best performances, in films like THE DARJEELING LIMITED (it keeps growing on me the more I watch it) or THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS or... well... BOTTLE ROCKET... are because the material is there. The script is there. He has something to work with. Something to play. He can be lightning in a bottle doing comedy (THE WEDDING CRASHERS, ZOOLANDER) or he can be slow painful death (YOU, ME & DUPREE, SHANGHAI anything), but if you want greatness from him consistently, it starts with the script.

DRILLBIT sets him up as this great character who's going to blow through this high school... and instead, he's just sort of an amiable fuck-up until the mechanical third-act complications and the inevitable redemption. I wish the film had been as crazy as it feels like it wants to be, and less of a rigid formula exercise. In some ways, I blame the source material, bringing it all back to Hughes. The film's best moments, and there are a few, feel like a real Hughes film, not just a hollow homage. I just wish Rogen and Brown had felt free to subvert and bend the formula a little more and given the film its own identity, one that gave Owen and the uniformly good-but-underutilized adult cast (Leslie Mann, Danny McBride, Cedric Yarbrough, Ian Roberts, and the great Stephen Root deserve special mention) a little more to do."