Old School (2003)

Genre

Comedy

Director

Todd Phillips

Country

USA

Cast

Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Jeremy Piven, Ellen Pompeo, Juliette Lewis, Leah Remini, Perrey Reeves, Craig Kilborn, Patrick Fischler, Sara Tanaka, Simon Helberg, Seann William Scott, Elisha Cuthbert, Patrick J. Adams

Storyline

Three friends, Mitch (Luke Wilson), Frank (Will Ferrell) and Beanie (Vince Vaughn), disillusioned with their personal lives try to recapture their glory days by forming their own fraternity in Mitch's new house that happens to be on a college campus.

Opinion

If there’s something I’ve learned from watching a lot of movies is to expect nothing good from a comedy starring Will Ferrell. And that’s exactly the case with Old School. It is a demential and moronic film, but you know what, it works as a comedy.

The story isn’t very original; it’s pretty much the typical frat house story meaning it doesn’t have much depth, there’s a lot of nonsense going on and it’s pretty lame, and there are also some annoyingly predictable subplots – as if the main plot wasn’t predictable enough – and yet it manages to be engaging and fun.

And the credits for that entirely goes to the cast. There isn’t much you can do with flat stereotypical characters completely lacking development, but the leading trio, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn, is hilarious, especially Ferrell. And it was nice seeing actors such as Sean William Scott making an appearance.

At last, there’s the humour. It isn’t great. Actually, it’s pretty shitty – yes, I’m talking about the toilet humour -, and vulgar – I would have never expected anything different, to be honest – and some jokes are really worn, but there’s plenty of laughing-out-loud moments and that’s exactly what a comedy like this one needs.