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Old School
Directed by Todd Phillips
By Noel Dix
The cast of Old School is an impressive one, easily leading to the conclusion that comedic talent like this is bound to deliver. Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn are enough to make anyone want to see this film and expect great things, but it’s not exactly the Swingers meets The Royal Tenenbaums result that comes out. The cast does their best and makes due with an average script from Todd Phillips, and he has his cast to thank for producing something that’s far superior to his previous attempt, Road Trip.
Mitch Martin (Wilson), a 30-something career-driven man, comes home early from a business trip to find his wife involved in some sort of kinky lifestyle that he doesn’t want any part of. The post-break-up Mitch is consoled by his best friends Beanie (Vaughn) and Frank (Will Ferrell), who decide to throw him a gigantic house party that’s flooded with college kids and even Snoop Dogg. After having his home confiscated by the local university for a housing violation, the three decide to start their own fraternity in order to comply with the crusty dean’s demands and sabotage his hopes of getting revenge on our three leading males, who picked on him in school. The battle for their rightful place as a fraternity, even though they’ve all graduated from school years ago, goes up and down, left and right and everywhere else you can think of. This is a standard college comedy that comes out ten times a year, so don’t expect to see something innovative. It’s basically just a handful of loose ideas barely tied together and serving no purpose. Scenes with talent such as Elisha Cuthbert are just brief set-ups to a quick, awkward situation later on in the film — just something for a good, cheap laugh.
What makes Old School better than most college comedies is the cast, which is easily the single greatest factor for this film, and had this script been performed by the latest teen actors in Hollywood, it would be a horrible 90 minutes. Wilson, Vaughn and Ferrell are all excellent comedians, each with a very specific style of delivery that keeps us interested in seeing them through this movie. The supporting cast are superb as well, from Craig Kilborn playing the arrogant, cheating boyfriend of Mitch’s love interest, played by Ellen Pompeo from Moonlight Mile. Not to mention that the sight of Sean William Scott alone is enough to make you crack up, and he’s also involved in the funniest moment of the film. A cast like this is bound to churn out something worth seeing and something that will definitely make you laugh, but it could have been so much more.
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Taking a break at about the halfway mark of director Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq war drama, The Hurt Locker, I realized my jaw was sore. I had been unconsciously clenching it from the first moment of The Hurt Locker, which chronicles a three-man team of explosives ordinance disposal (bomb s...
Full Review
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