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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 32.89%
Worth A Look: 32.21%
Average: 9.4%
Pretty Bad: 13.42%
Total Crap: 12.08%
7 reviews, 107 user ratings
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| Old School |
by Erik Childress
"You Don’t Want To Kick It Here Old School."
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There’s no reason to walk out of a film like Old School angry. After all, it advertises itself as nothing more than a stupid comedy with stupid people doing stupid things. It also promises boobs. That makes it a feature-length beer commercial which in many ways sets itself up as a throwback to the “slob” comedies of yesteryear like Animal House and Caddyshack. Hey, I’m all for that. The recent spate of teenage gross-out sex comedies (Van Wilder, Sorority Boys) have been affronts to everything that was once funny about food fights and Baby Ruths in the pool. So, who better than comic masters like Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn to show them how its done? Old School is testament that even the greatest improvisers in the world should be avoiding directors such as Todd Phillips like the clap.What Phillips does with this film deserves the old school justice of a good lynching. With his previous outing, Road Trip, scoring a modest return, Dreamworks felt confident enough to give this guy some more money to essentially make the same movie. Top billing in Old School goes to Luke Wilson as Mitch Martin who comes home one day to find his wife (Juliette Lewis) watching pornos and entertaining gangbang enthusiasts. As one marriage dissolves another begins when buddy Frank (Ferrell) walks down the plank...er...aisle against the inappropriately timed advice by Beanie (Vince Vaughn).
Beanie is a rather hen-pecked husband, but a good father who only needs to say the word “earmuffs” to get his son to cover up before any profanity tirade could cloud the room. The self-made millionaire throws an amazing block party for his disgraced pal, starting a recurring trend of celebrity cameos in the film that screams out for title cards. (“Hey kids, its Snoop Dogg. Applaud!”) After reacquainting his love for beer, Frank “The Tank” gets thrown out on his ass after parading it in a drunken streaking exhibition and a former nerdy classmate is threatening to kick Mitch out of his new house. This all seemingly takes place in just a few days. That’s when Beanie decides to turn Mitch’s house into a fraternity to both adhere to the college zoning restrictions and to perhaps relive those glory years of partying and loose women.
Mail carriers don’t revisit familiar territory like this as often, but for about 35 minutes Old School works on that sophomoric level we walk in expecting mostly thanks to Ferrell’s crazy fearlessness and Vaughn’s quick retorts. How a film such as this can then sink so quickly once the hook of the story takes hold is something beyond film school study. Timing is all off, jokes don’t build and, more importantly, never payoff. I counted three instances where I pre-guessed punchlines that never came. Expecting the obvious is one thing. To not even have the brains to come up with it themselves is a sickness these filmmakers can never be cured of.
Phillips missteps this material in so many ways that it’s a miracle that he was able to secure such a name cast in the first place. How do you take Jeremy Piven, one of the great unsung comic talents of his generation and restrain him into the Dean Wormer/still nerdy former classmate who’s going to payback our heroes? Piven’s been wasted before in good and bad films, but to watch him all bispecled and corduroyed up, humorlessly blackmailing students to fit his grandmaster scheme is the saddest thing I’ve seen since Schindler’s List.
And dare I be the first to say it, but is Luke Wilson a pale shadow of just about every comic straight man through history? With the exception of his collaborations with Wes Anderson and brother Owen, Luke is always playing the quiet, seemingly confused nice guy who is just a boring screen presence. This script even gives him the obligatory former crush girl (Ellen Pompeo, quickly morphing into Renee Zellweger) who may now have an interest in him if it weren’t for her jerk boyfriend (talk show host Craig Kilborn, playing up the part of his persona we all expect is hiding just underneath his TV smarminess.) Wilson’s shtick works when he’s given an unexpected punchline, but that’s not the case here. (A dollar to anyone who can come up with what Wilson should have said to his co-workers after finally telling off his boss.) As is, Wilson is playing straight man to Ferrell and Vaughn, the latter of which ceases to have a funny line in the film’s final hour.When you walk out of Old School, you may be tempted to find Todd Phillips and tie a cinder block to his genitals and drop it from the Hoover Dam. Phillips and co-writer Scot Armstrong (you don’t get off easy either) miss all the inherent satiric possibilities of fraternities, growing old, accepting responsibilities and even a chance to mock Fight Club. To call Old School uninspired would be an insult to screenwriting coma victims. To call Old School a stupid, slob comedy would scorn those talk show fatties who need a crane to get out of their homes and believe that not eating carbs would be depriving themselves of fish. To call Old School a wasted opportunity with a wasted cast under the helm of a talentless writer/director would…just be letting it off too easy. Ferrell. Vaughn. Piven. How did Phillips manage to do it? I don’t know, except that it makes me so angry that he was given the money to do it.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7058&reviewer=198
originally posted: 02/21/03 11:35:59
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USA
21-Feb-2003 (R)
DVD: 10-Jun-2003
UK
N/A
Australia
29-May-2003
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