- Drew Morton
After hearing teenagers raving about the latest teen sex comedy, Todd (Road Trip) Phillip’s Old School, it seems they instantly considered it as an instant classic. Perhaps, for the teenage audience the film is marketed towards, it is just that. However, a person who shares the traits of actually being a college student and sharing the age of some of the characters depicted Old School proves to be just the opposite. It is not a classic comedy, it’s not even a good one. It’s paper thin plot consists mainly of giving each star center stage while their character attempts to get laid. This said, it is terribly sad to see talents like Vince Vaughn (Swingers), Luke Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums), Will Farrell (Saturday Night Live), Andy Dick, Jeremy Piven (P.C.U.), and Seann William Scott (American Pie) adding Old School to their collective resumes.
The plot follows the average joe character, Mitch (Luke Wilson) and his thirty-something friends Frank (Will Farrell) and Beanie (Vince Vaughn) as the trio decides to move into an apartment near a local college and start a fraternity in order to get women. Mitch has recently lost his wife due to her strange fetish for gang bangs and is desperately seeking the love and devotion of a girlfriend, not a fuck buddy. Beanie tries to give Mitch the later by starting the frat. Frank has recently gotten married, but his low self-confidence makes him seek out the college lifestyle that Beanie has to offer and thus puts his marriage in jeopardy.
As one may suspect, this fraternity does not exactly go over as one may expect. The Dean of the college (Jeremy Piven) wants it closed down because Mitch, Frank, and Beanie picked on him when he was in college. Frank’s wife tries desperately to get her husband back, but loses him to the strong grip of the college lifestyle. Eventually, the frat turns into the hot spot on campus and Mitch, Frank, and Beanie become heroes. Mitch un-willingly turns into a Tyler Durden character; given free food at restaurants, becomes the envy of his colleagues at work, and is called "the Godfather" by almost every person he encounters. Beanie accepts the affections of numerous women, but turns them away at the last moment, citing his wife and child as his conscience. Frank, between drunken hazes, attempts to get his wife back while sinking deeper into his glory days. In the end, the frat is put in jeopardy by the Dean (a la Animal House) and the trio must win it back and keep their pledges from being expelled.
Todd Phillips, the director and co-writer, succeeded at bringing college humor and the sex comedy to audiences with Road Trip. Old School seems like a juvenile attempt at the same concepts and gags and fails in every area that it’s predecessor triumphed. This could be because of the fact that the only sympathetic character in the film is Mitch, who is a characature of the spineless manipulee. It doesn’t help the character by allowing him to keep a friend like Beanie around. Beanie is the stereotypical "Stifler" character who makes you wonder how he could ever have any friends and anyone stupid enough to befriend him deserves what he gets. This being said, the film has an incredible amount of talent behind it. The cast has the potential to be one of the funniest comedic ensembles ever assembled, but Phillips lacks the material and the self-control to turn Old School into one of the inspirations of college comedy, thus turning it into one of the many poorly constructed clones of the genre. Frankly, it would have been more interesting to watch the cast improvise for an hour and twenty minutes.
February and the post-holiday winter itself is one of the slowest times for movies. Studios regularly dump pre-release failures like Kangaroo Jack, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, and Cradle 2 the Grave, which are overshadowed by Oscar films (Chicago) and the year’s big Valentine’s Day film (Daredevil), in hopes of making a marginal profit. Old School is one of these films, which is a shame. With the right script this film could have been the 21st Century’s answer to National Lampoon’s Animal House. Sadly, that spot is still vacant.
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