Old School

Old School

2003

Directed by Todd Phillips

If you're like me, you saw the previews for Old School back in 2003 and thought to yourself, "man that looks stupid, there's no way I'm watching that movie." But maybe, after six years of people telling you that it's one of their favourite movies, and that it's soooo funny, you're thinking, hey, should I give it a chance? Let me tell you that the answer is unequivocally NO!!! I can honestly say that it has basically no redeeming qualities. It's not funny, it's racist, misogynistic, utterly mediocre and kinda pathetic.

The story revolves around sad-sack Mitch (Luke Wilson in the least interesting incarnation of his nice guy schtick) who finds that his girlfriend is having orgies behind his back. He moves out and ends up living in a house near a college campus. Enter friends "Beanie" (an annoying Vince Vaughan) and recently married, soon-to-be-divorced Frank "the Tank" (Will Ferrell in his usual man-child mode), who try to get Wilson hooked up with some college types in a frat-style party featuring (yawn) Snoop Dogg. Can somebody get this guy to stop ruining everything, please? One cameo on "Weeds" was bad enough. Anyway, due to some preposterous zoning change, Mitch's place is supposed to turn into a campus building and he has to move out. Except that every Man over thirty in America is supposed to live with a deep longing for the days of college debauchery - therefore, they decide to create their own fraternity, accepting anybody at all, whether or not they attend the college. The result is a bunch of pathetic old white guys who can't get on with their lives, and a few black kids thrown in to make the film seem less vanilla I guess. I can't see why in hell they would want to hang around with a bunch of washed-up losers. So they get into an uninteresting battle of wills with a vindictive dean who wants to close down the frat and, supposedly, hilarity ensues.

Except that hilarity never ensues. I could see every joke coming form a mile away, and none of them were particularly amusing. If you think the following things are funny: Will Ferrell running around naked; penises being yanked by strings attached to cinder blocks; a thirty-year-old sleeping with a drunken high-school girl; fat people being forced to compete in gymnastics competitions; an old man wrestling two topless girls in a tub of KY Jelly; homophobic stereotypes fellating carrots to give blowjob classes to housewives - then you might think this is the Citizen Kane of comedies, but you should also stop recommending movies to me.

There's no accounting for bad taste, I guess, but my girlfriend and I both found Old School to be quite clearly a craptacle. It's hard for me to understand why people like this sort of shit, when there are so many good movies out there that go unlauded. People seem to have an enduring tolerance for stupidity and mediocrity. I'm honestly not being overly harsh here. I can even abide stupidity if it at least makes me laugh. Take Step Brothers, for instance - another idiotic flick that nonetheless drew quite a few laughs out of me. Or more recent films like I Love You Man and Role Models, both unfortunatly drawing on society's disconcerting affection for man-children, but also well-written and funny. But millions of people are out there, enjoying complete shite. I've had various friends, co-workers and acquaintances wax rhapsodic over the excellence of such whoppers as the racist and insipid Transformers 2, GI Joe, fucking Old School and I don't even want to remember what else. When I think about it, I wonder why I bother recommending any good movies to anybody at all, when everybody seems to find their attention better spent on the most mundane, low-quality, immature shit available. Every day I see the cultivation of this obsession with junk culture. It's not a wonder to me why ignorance reigns.

And did I mention racist? Yeah, I'm getting pretty sick of all this anglo-centric blatant racism in major Hollywood productions. The head of student council, willing to take a bribe to further her academic career, is of course an Asian girl. One of the black students explains at one point that he is the first person in his family to attend college. The only reason for a brown guy to be in the movie seems to be as a visual joke based on his scrawny build. Add to this a misogynist bent: your life is over, says Vaughan's character to Frank on his wedding day. This whole view of marriage and monogamy as a virtual castration penetrates the whole film. Wives take blowjob classes to please their husbands while their husbands throw parties with topless college "babes". And yet, somehow the heroes of this movie are supposed to be the guys. Why any woman would be interested in a single one of these losers, I have no idea. As I said before, there's no accounting for bad taste.

Personally, I find the American obsession with college and high-school life pretty depressing. Every comedy, soap opera, and tear-jerker based around a longing for a mythical past strikes me as unhealthy, a tragedy. Henry Miller recognized this trend and wrote "Death of a Salesman". Somehow, Hollywood continues to cash in. No matter what I say, there will always be a market for movies like Old School. Thinking now of the sickening popularity of professional douchebag frat-boy blogger Tucker Max, whose best-selling "memoir" I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell has just been released as a film in theatres. But why do women like it? And how did we get to the point where sexist, womanizing, immature assholes become comedic and sometimes heroic figures in the popular culture? I have no idea, but like I always say, there's a reason I hate people.

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