Drillbit Taylor has a 10% positive rating from the Rotten Tomatoes creme de la creme. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the paying customers after they’ve seen this thing. There’s a very weird climate inside a theatre when audience members starts to slowly realize they’re being burned. I know a guy who says he enjoyed it, but I would imagine that most viewers will mutter to themselves, “They charged me money to see this?”

If I were Judd Apatow I would do the old Desert Hot Springs hideout routine for the next couple of weeks. Slip on a pair of shades and one of those celebrity fishing hats with the brim pulled down and get into the Prius and hightail it.
“As an admirer, mostly, of Mr. Apatow’s oeuvre, I was inclined to believe that Drillbit Taylor was a cheap knockoff, that the producer credit Mr. Apatow receives at the beginning was akin to the Rolex insignia on the watch I bought for $20 on Canal Street a while back,” writes N.Y. Times critic Tony Scott.
“But it makes more sense to think of this dumb little picture, with Mr. Apatow’s wife, Leslie Mann, in a supporting role, and Seth Rogen, one of his alter egos, sharing credit for story and screenplay, as part of the Apatow discount line. ‘You get what you pay for,” the tag line on the advertisement says. I saw it free, and I still feel cheated.”
Scott also mentions “risks of backlash and brand dilution.” I may as well repeat my agreement with this, which I stated a couple of days ago, to wit: “On top of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, another Apatow comedy that I’ve yet to review but which I felt kind of badly about, this is probably the beginning of a temporary downgrade in the brand.
“It’ll be restored in August with Pineapple Express, and it may be turn out that Marshall will do okay commercially. But the notion of the Apatow seal being some kind of dependable assurance of a rollicking good time is, for now, out the window.”