Drillbit Taylor (Wilson) is not your typical vagrant. You won't find him clutching a bottle of White Lightning and growling at a passers-by from a grimy sleeping bag.

No. Drillbit lives in a sun-kissed lean-to nestling in scrub looking over the Pacific, enjoys a hosedown under Malibu Beach's showers and is on first name terms with the LA commuters who cheerfully indulge his inept panhandling.

Meanwhile, across town, a trio of schoolboys are suffering a baptism of fire, urine and humiliation on their first day at high school from psycho-bully Filkins (Frost).

The freshmen victims are roly-poly Ryan (Gentile), anorexic beanpole Wade (Nate Hartley) and disturbed shrimp Emmit (the seriously weird David Dorfman).

Reasoning that the only way to defeat their nemesis is to employ a bodyguard, they advertise online for some schoolgate muscle.

Step forward Drillbit. He's not the best (he tells the gullible teens he was booted out of the army for "unauthorised heroism") but he is the cheapest.

Posing as a supply teacher, the smooth-talking Drillbit cons the kids into thinking he's a master of Black Ops and has a deadly ability with "Mexican Judo".

Yet he's really intent on fleecing the youngsters for all their cash to pay for a plane ticket to a new life in British Columbia.

Apatow-linked product is the current Gold Standard of American comedy: the quality is consistent and you are basically assured of a rip-roaring night out.

This is at the lighter end of the Apatow product range (against heavyweights such as 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) and is pitched at teens rather than adults.

Wilson is perfectly cast as the self-deluding, sunny stoner who slips responsibility like a skin yet has a nagging shred of decency that enables his character to stay likeable.

His scenes with Mrs Apatow, Leslie Mann, as a horny co-educator, are the high point but Gentile, Dorfman and Hartley more than hold their own as the trio of nerds in permanent fear of the grinning Filkins.

Drillbit more than succeeds as a superior screwball comedy.

Tim Evans