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Review by: Jack Foley | Rating:
Two
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Bloopers and outtakes; 'Inside The Actors
Studio' spoof; Deleted scenes; Welcome To Old School - Now Get
Undressed; Nominations and Awards - So Did We Win Anything?
FROM the team behind Road Trip comes yet another of those raucous
campus comedies, about sex, booze and coming-of-age, that attempts
to gain mileage by gearing itself towards an older age group.
Old School hangs out with a trio of thirtysomething buddies,
who attempt to recapture the outrageous, irrepressible fun of
their college years by starting their own off-campus fraternity.
Heading it is Luke Wilson’s Mitch, recently back on the
bachelor trail after coming home and finding his girlfriend in
the middle of sex party with two complete strangers.
Goaded by his best buddies, Beanie (Vince Vaughn) and Frank (Will
Ferrell), Mitch becomes an icon of irresponsibility to the nearby
college students, throwing party after wild party, and prank after
prank, while trying to get his life back in order and retain some
semblance of normality.
Yet as keen as he is to find some romantic stability, both Beanie
and Frank use Mitch as an escape route from their own frustrations,
epitomised by their marriages and the newfound responsibility
that type of commitment brings.
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For the most part, Old School succeeds in being a laugh-out-loud
comedy, fuelled by all-manner of bad taste jokes and crass situations,
the like of which have been seen many times before, but which
succeed because of the charisma of the main players.
Think Animal House crossed with the likes of Road Trip and
American Pie, and you’ll
know what to expect, with nothing new really being added to
the overworked genre.
Credit, therefore, must go to the central trio, for helping to
turn something fairly routine, into one of the funnier gross-out
efforts in recent memory, breathing new life into an ailing formula
along the way.
The combined charm of the trio is such that audiences are likely
to warm to their boyish endeavours, as they strive to return to
the care-free existence of days gone by, while invoking the wrath
of Jeremy Piven’s uptight university dean.
Moments to savour, therefore, include a KY wrestling match, a
tranquilliser gun accident and Frank the Tank’s return to
the booze, as well as Vaughn’s constant attempts to shield
his children from ‘bad words’, while counselling his
buddies in the ways of bachelor-dom.
Vaughn, especially, is good value as the smooth-talking father
who seizes the opportunity to let his hair down, while the larger-than-life
Ferrell (a Saturday Night Live veteran) is quite simply hilarious
as the former hellraiser, struggling to banish his former demons.
Wilson, too, lends proceedings a strong emotional grounding,
exuding the type of bewildered charisma he exhibited in The Royal
Tenenbaums.
With cameos from the likes of 24’s
Elisha Cuthbert and Road Trip’s Seann William Scott, this
is a blast from start to finish, which makes you yearn for those
innocent days of old, devoid of the monotony of that old 9 to
5 routine.
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