Old School

As Seen On DVD

I spent some time living and working in the states. This meant catching Saturday Night Live (or SNL as we are supposed to abbreviate it, apparently) when a new show was on. It has been going a while and, I'm reliably informed, has had good and bad times. It was then going through a bit of resurgence, with it's political bite being noticed by the politicians, Tina Fey and Jimmy Nallon getting props for News Update (or whatever it was called) and Will Ferrell. He is one of those people who is just funny. This is quite a rare thing, but I do believe he has got a comedy gene somewhere in his genetic make-up.

Which is why I watched Old School. I think that he might have been suffering from a genetic disorder at the time he made this film.

I might be being harsh here; it is quite tough for SNLers to make the break successfully from TV to film; for every Mike Myers or Eddie Murphy, there is a Norm MacDonald or David Spade. So perhaps he was just grabbing everything he can (based on his current work schedule, this is very likely.) I just wish he had read the script.

Old School sees Luke Wilson come back early to find his girlfriend having kinky sex with other people. So they split. He moves into a new place which is on his old campus and somehow he is persuaded by his married friends to create a fraternity in order to keep living there after the Dean (Jeremy Piven, underused as a supposed former enemy from college days) tries to evict him. And that's about it in terms of plot.

The hijinks are supposed to ensue, but never really do. There's a huge party, and the newly-married Ferrell streaking through the town, and then they have to all pull together to pass some silly tests in order to prove they are a fraternity and keep some people in college. Or something. I might have smiled on a few occasions, but this is supposed to be a comedy. I'm supposed to be laughing out loud. I wasn't. Watching the deleted scenes, of which there were many, there seemed to be another half hour of stuff they didn't bother with, meaning the script must have been quite bloated indeed. They tried their best to get 90 minutes of material in, but couldn't quite make it, showing you how difficult the editor's job was.

I was embarrassed for nearly all involved; Wilson doesn't have his brother's ability to choose scripts; Ferrell never really gets going; Vince Vaughan, as the other married friend, just plays Vince Vaughan, which is basically the character from Swingers which he seems to play over and over again. Juliette Lewis cameos as the kinky girlfriend who gets things going, after her sobering up period following addiction, she'll take anything she can get; Piven never seems to get the breaks I think he deserves; Sean William Scott turns up for an over the top cameo, which is to be expected; Leah Remini is given nothing to do apart from riff on her character from King of Queens. This could've been better but it seems that Todd Phillips doesn't really have the chops to knock out a good film.

Rating: D