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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Old School
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 out of 4
 Review by Susan Granger 1½ stars out of 4
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If you're into crude, gross comedy, you're the lowbrow target audience
for this "National Lampoon's Animal House"-meets-"Frat House" that revolves
around three thirtysomething men who, seeking to avoid responsibility in the
midst of crisis situations, start their own fraternity.
Mitch (Luke Wilson) is a rather uptight realtor who returns home early
one afternoon from a business meeting to discover his live-in girl-friend Heidi
(Juliette Lewis) cavorting with two undressed, blindfolded playmates. He
immediately moves out and finds a rental home just off-campus in the college
town where his buddies, Frank (Will Farrell) and Beanie (Vince Vaughn) still
live. Newlywed Frank soon regresses to a Frank-the-Tank alter-ego and Beanie,
supposedly a settled salesman with a wife (Leah Remini) and kids, yearns to be
carefree again. So the rental becomes a Party House, where Snoop Dogg and his
band rock a bacchanal and there are KY-jelly topless wrestling contests.
Disapproving of their determination to recapture youth is the vengeful Dean of
Students (Jeremy Piven). Much of the comedy is drawn from the obvious
impossibility of juggling juvenile behavior with adult relationships,
particularly when Mitch, now known as "The Godfather" rekindles a high-school
crush on divorcee Nicole (Ellen Pompeo). Having made a documentary called "Frat
House" (1998), writer/director Todd Phillips was familiar with the concept and
collaborated on the screenplay with Court Crandall and Scot Armstrong, with whom
he had co-written "Road Trip." But the bawdy fun and stupidly forced humor is
not as inventive as "Animal House" and the genital jokes are not only insulting
but often homophobic. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Old School" is a
vulgar, tasteless 4. Enroll at your own risk.
Copyright © 2003 Susan Granger
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