Send ‘School’ back to school
February 25, 2003
“Old School” really isn’t a movie. Trust me — I know. It’s more of a random assembling of images that loosely tie in with each other.
Oh, sure, it has a few laughs, but many of the jokes in the movie try too hard to rip off other great “stupid comedies” like “Dumb and Dumber” and “Tommy Boy.”
Mitch (Luke Wilson) just found out that his girlfriend has been cheating on him. So he and his two buddies, Frank and Beanie (Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn), get the grand idea to start a fraternity for everyone — old, young, student, non-student, whomever.
Something that could be misconstrued as a plot runs throughout the movie, but there’s really not a storyline. I vaguely remember seeing someone bad who wanted to shut their fraternity down. Maybe. But the movie doesn’t play up the plot enough for the audience to even know it’s there.
The entire movie is just Mitch and his fraternity brothers getting drunk and listening to Snoop Dogg (who is in the movie, by the way).
It was really disappointing to see this movie waste the great talent of Luke Wilson. I mean, I watched “The Royal Tenenbaums” this weekend with a friend and realized that Luke Wilson is a terrific actor. But “Old School” does nothing except waste his talents on stupid “Oh-my-gosh, you’re-so-drunk” antics.
Of course, I wasn’t really expecting much from a movie like this. I wasn’t expecting it to be an Oscar contender next year. But I was expecting it to be somewhat funny. The funniest things about the movie are shown in the previews, though.
There’s a jelly wrestling match between the 90-year-old man and the two hot college chicks, and Ferrell runs down a street in his birthday suit. But for the most part, the jokes fall flat, along with the script, the acting and the plot.
Ferrell does give it his all, however. His mannerisms and speaking tone are so well developed for comedy that pretty much anything he says or does is funny. While his performance is one of the few redeeming qualities of “Old School,” he was much funnier on “Saturday Night Live” than in this movie.
If you want a quick laugh, naked girls, parties and sex jokes, then “Old School” is your movie. Otherwise, don’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.
GRADE – D
Reach Zack Sparks at [email protected].