REVIEW: ‘Orange County’ a parade of mishaps
Orange County looks and smells like another rancid teen movie wherein clear-skinned boys and girls ditz through high school farting, making out and listening to crappy pop music, ala Brittany Spears and her look-alike armada of bleach blonde, busty, no-talent wannabe divas.
On the other hand, I derived all that analysis from scrutinizing the movie poster and watching the trailer. Viewing the film was an entirely different experience.
Yes, it’s cheesy and predictable, but it’s also warmhearted and truthful enough to cause slight retrospect in most moviegoers. It’s not overwhelmingly brilliant, but it’s better than most post-Christmas sleepers which normally litter theaters in January. In fact, the nubile, nepotism-laced cast is what churns the laughs.
Colin Hanks, son of Tom, is the main character – Shaun Brumder, a former pothead surfer who forsakes his happy-go-lucky lifestyle after he uncovers a novel by Marcus Skinner (Kevin Kline). Skinner’s novel, which Shaun reads 52 times in a month, changes his life. Instead of following in his maniacal father’s (John Lithgow) footsteps, pursuing a career in business, Shaun decides to be a writer. In order to make his dream come true, he needs to attend Stanford, where Marcus Skinner resides as a professor of English.
Shaun, his girlfriend, Ashley (Schuyler Fisk – daughter of Sissy Spacek), and his loser brother, Lance (Jack Black) road trip to Stanford, in a last-ditch attempt to get Shaun into his dream university. Along the way, the trio feeds the dean of admission speed, burn down a campus building and overhear numerous college guys and gals sounding excessively sententious. As Professor Skinner’s book caused Shaun to reflect upon his existence, so does his misadventures with Ashley and Lance, and as before, he steps toward maturation.
Mike White’s, (who wrote the screenplay for Jennifer Aniston’s hit Sundance movie, The Good Girl) dialogue writing is clever and fresh, perfect for the Belushi-esque Jack Black.
In the end, it’s the cameos from Chevy Chase, Lilly Tomlin, Harold Ramis, Jane Adams and Ben Stiller, plus the enjoyable zeal of the youthful Hanks, Fisk and Black that drive the movie from the absurd to the entertaining. This one is worth $6, if you’re optimistic. If not, certainly catch it at the discount.