Are you a big fan of the gross-out comedy “Road Trip?” Or are you a Pay-Seven, Eight or Nine student and counting? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then “Old School” is the movie for you.
In this not-quite-sex-comedy that still has lots of ridiculous sex and nudity in it, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn play 30-something men who get sucked back into college life when a bad breakup with a girlfriend turns into an opportunity to start a new frat house.
Mitch — Wilson — comes home one day to find his unfaithful girlfriend — Juliette Lewis — entangled in some kinky situations. He dumps her and moves out, conveniently, into a house close to Harrison University. When sniveling Dean Pritchard — Jeremy Piven — rezones Mitch’s house to be used for college purposes only, it seems as if Mitch will be homeless. But if Mitch’s friends Beanie — Vaughn — and the newly married Frank — Ferrell — turn the house into a fraternity, the problem will be solved. It’s all beer funnels, keggers and K-Y jelly wrestling orgies from now on, right?
Sort of, for in a plot complication that can be seen miles ahead, Mitch’s fraternity — which contains mostly men who don’t attend the college and are really old or really large or just really odd — needs to get “certified” by passing five tests — athletics, debate, academia and two other forgettable obstacles.
Here is where the film gets truly preposterous — at the athletic competition, the Dean picks a two-ton kid to do the vault and he flies like Peter Pan. Fortunately, that is probably the film’s least funny and most clichd moment.
Admittedly, the plausibility of this film is a moot point, as “Old School” is intended as a ridiculous farce made especially to showcase the comedic talents of Will Ferrell. Indeed, Ferrell is the best thing about this movie as the entertaining, hilariously bumbling clown to Vaughn’s and Wilson’s rarely funny straight men.
In one particularly memor-able scene, Ferrell’s Frank shoots himself in the jugular with a tranquilizer gun while a townie, “American Pie” and “Road Trip’s” putty-faced Seann William Scott, looks on. Frank then falls into a pool and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” plays into a truly hilarious spoof of “The Graduate.” Maybe that’s a movie reference that will fly over the heads of today’s target teenage audience, but then again, maybe not. Either way, it’s funny.
There’s also enough variety in star cameos to satisfy practic-ally anyone — for the intel-lectual person, “Crossfire’s” James Carville shows up in a debate, for the music lover there’s rapper Snoop Dogg, not to mention “24’s” Elisha Cuthbert and comedian Andy Dick.
Whatever your taste, at least it can be said that “Old School’s” tagline is 100 percent accurate — “All the fun of college, none of the education.” If you see this film, you certainly won’t get smarter, but you will most definitely laugh out loud a lot.
Fong can be reached at gfong@campustimes.org.
