NOTHING strikes fear into the heart of an overweight, self-conscious young boy quicker than the prospect of double PE class.

Assuming you remember the correct kit and avoid the embarrassment of taking class in your vest and pants, there's still the ritual humiliation of being picked last for team sports, the withering looks of disdain from classmates when you let in the winning goal and the verbal lashings from the middle-aged sadist with a whistle.

Otherwise known as your teacher.

Fifteen years after a miserable childhood of mental and physical torture at Forest Meadow Middle School, John Farley (Seann William Scott) has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker and author of Letting Go: Getting Past Your Past.

Handsome, charming and brimming with self-confidence, John kids himself that he has left behind the bullied wimp of his early years.

When his hometown awards him its highest accolade, the Corn Cob Key, John ignores the advice of his publicist Maggie (Amy Poehler) and takes time out from a book tour to surprise his mother, Beverly (Susan Sarandon).

She's delighted to see her boy, and even more thrilled to introduce her fiancé, Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton), who is still as mean-spirited, vindictive and spiteful as ever.

Unwilling to let his mother say "I do" to his nemesis, John schemes with old school-mate Jay Nedderman (Ethan Suplee) to break up the relationship.

Mr. Woodcock makes no sense.

Having spent a good hour reliving John's hellish memories of his schooldays, emboldening Thornton's teacher's credentials as the devil incarnate, the scriptwriters neglect to rehabilitate their eponymous tyrant.

Like John, we can't comprehend for a minute why the town adores Mr. Woodcock, when he has physically and verbally abused half of them, or what a sweetheart like Beverly would see in him.

A romantic subplot for John and a former classmate (Melissa Sagemiller) is an after-thought, forgotten after a couple of cursory scenes.

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