In Role Models, Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd play a pair of slackers and energy drink spokesmen that through a reckless act of public endangerment discover that the true measure of life is what you give back. Or something like that anyway. The fact is, the content of the film is inconsequential next to the fratastic good times and foul-mouthed humour that can be had at the expense of children’s charities, Red Bull, cos play, Starbucks and people with drug problems. But on the Brightside, there’s a lot of very funny stuff in Role Models sandwiched between the stagnant and the insincere.

Wheeler (Scott) and Danny (Rudd) are forced to do 150 hours of community service following one bad day for Danny, which saw his girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) dump him post-desperate, half-hearted marriage proposal. For their service, the boys are taken to Sturdy Wings, a big brother and sister-like organization that teams up mentors with young people needing a friend. Danny gets Augie Farks (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, AKA: McLovin), a teen who’s into LARPs, or Live Action Role-Playing games. Wheeler’s charge is Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson), a tough-talking, latch key kid who bonds with Wheeler over a shared love of boobies.

The surprising heart of the film is through the LARP, although it calls them LAIRE for Live Action Interactive Role-play Explorers. Was there some kind of copyright issue? I’m just curious. Anyway, one can sense that there’s a begrudging respect for the world of cos play, but at the same time it provides the film its most fertile ground for humour. Before the knights of the nation KISS-My-Anthia take the battlefield of LAIRE you almost think that all the jokes had been milked dry, but boy were you wrong. Where can you go after the uptight king that holds court at the Burger Hole, or the guy that talks non-stop in Ye Olde English, right?

But the real show in this film isn’t the stunts and gimmicks; it’s the actors, at least to say the Fab Four: Danny, Wheeler, Augie and Ronnie. Rudd finally gets the spotlight, or at least half of it, and does a reasonable job of making the surly jerk thing come across as an endearing personality quirk, but there are times that it works and others that it doesn’t. Any time Rudd smirks when someone makes a thinly veiled double entendre is gold, but when he exuberantly defends Augie to his doubting parents over dinner, it’s somewhat suspect. And while Scott plays another modification of Steve Stifler, both he and Rudd find a great foil in Jane Lynch as the reformed coke fiend that now heads Sturdy Wings.

I don’t think Role Models gets any points for either originality. It’s more or less that same kind of borderline juvenile humour mixed with the struggles of grown men battling arrested development, which has been the soup de jour for a lot of Hollywood comedies these days. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and when a movie can make it work, so much the better. Role Models provides many laughs from beginning to end and is on par with Tropic Thunder for hilarity. Like the titular duo, it’s not as inspiring as it should be, but you come home afterward knowing that you had a good time.