Old School (**)
review by Ken Gumbs

Now I’m not sure why I had such high hopes for Old School? Maybe it was simply the premise of the film that hooked me in? A group of aging men try to escape the boredom of adulthood by starting a fraternity and reliving some college glory days. As I have recently departed from my “glory days” I would be lying if I said I didn’t relate to the real world hating theme of this movie. So all of you armchair psychiatrists might know why I was so excited for this film, but it won’t take a degree in armchair psychiatry to know why this film fell short of mediocrity.

The story is simple enough, Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Farrell establish a fake fraternity outside of a local University, and memories of Porky's come flooding back. Will Farrell is a newlywed trying hard to adjust to married life, Wilson has recently broken up with his cheating girlfriend, and Vaughn is just not satisfied with his electronics business and two children. Well what is the problem? Perfect casting with some great actors should save any movie, right? Wrong.

This film unfortunately dropped the ball with these three wonderful actors. Maybe Todd Phillips simply did not know how to handle such a funny cast. Vaughn is the quintessential dry witted player, Farrell is the wild man, and Wilson is the lovable loser with a broken heart. It’s funny, it is almost as if I’ve seen these actors play identical roles in the past, again and again.

On the outside this film has huge potential. A wonderful fish out of water story about losers living out past glory, like Billy Madison meets Animal House. While sophomoric, those films captured lovable characters that made us laugh but did not cross the line into the dreaded generic comedy zone. We never grow to love any of the characters of Old School, we simply watch them stumble from party to party and occasionally laugh at a cheap joke.

In its defense, the movie delivered on every promise made by their funny commercials. The three old men did start up a fake fraternity, Will Farrell did get drunk, and there were some naked young women. So what else could you ask from a generic comedy? Not more than you could ask of The New Guy or The Hot Chick. Unfortunately, I though this film would be better than those films, I was wrong.

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