Will to Power
Someone’s got to say it. We’ve underestimated Will Ferrell.
It wasn’t hard to do. His Saturday Night Live stint was never hugely impressive. (His George W. Bush impersonation didn’t sound or look particularly like G.W., and given the wealth of material to draw from wasn’t nearly as funny as it should’ve been.) And of course, Ferrell was one of the main characters in both A Night at the Roxbury and The Ladies Man, two films that should have earned all involved a permanent revocation of their Screen Actors Guild cards, if not a special circle in hell. By comparison, even his grating turn in Zoolander looked accomplished.
In the new movie Old School, however, Ferrell owns the screen. Sketch comedy must not have been his forte; as it turns out, the man’s not yet forty, but he was born to play midlife crisis. Externally, he’s the grown-up guy putting his past aside for a married life full of meals at Olive Garden, but inside he’s still Frank the Tank, a wild man with a drinking capacity to match the nickname.
Ferrell is backed up by Vince Vaughn, hilariously updating his Swingers bit by adding extra layers of denial — no midlife crisis is ever gonna hit him, because he’ll never admit that he’s approaching midlife. And then there’s Luke Wilson, ostensibly the lead. Whereas brother Owen has mastered the art of sounding stoned all the time, Luke’s talent here is for sounding just slightly hungover, which works as long as we’re not expected to believe that the character has somehow changed.
The plot, such as it is, plays almost like a parody of Fight Club. Emasculated by his boring job and a promiscuous wife (Juliette Lewis), Mitch (Wilson) falls under the influence of his more anarchic friend Beanie (Vaughn) and turns his house near a college campus into a fraternity for both students and other emasculated office workers. Before long, Mitch has gained a reputation as “The Godfather,” and virtually everyone everywhere knows who he his and will do any favor for him.
Naturally there’s an evil dean (Jeremy Piven, playing against type) and a love interest (Moonlight Mile‘s Ellen Pompeo) who carries a torch for Mitch despite being tethered to a bland beau (Craig Kilborn). But surprisingly, the pop-culture references span generations, and the soundtrack does likewise, matching Snoop Dogg and Andrew W.K. with Metallica and Whitesnake.
Old School is less funny than director Todd Phillips’ previous outing, Road Trip, but it doesn’t depend as much on gross-out humor and graciously provides gratuitous nudity and swearing. And Phillips may find that he’s touched a nerve with this one. Who among those who got good grades in college doesn’t feel the tiniest pang of regret that he missed out on the wild shenanigans films like Animal House promised us?
