K-SCORE: 69
Director: Todd Phillips
Writer: Todd Phillips, Scot Armstrong
Starring: Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Jeremy Piven, Ellen Pompeo
Spoiler Level: Total, I do a scene-by-scene breakdown of everything that happens.
Old School’s an old film now, going back thirteen-fourteen years, but it’s still funny. I feel they caught Vince Vaughn at a good time in his career where he could still generate laughs and not just be shoved into some terrible sappy script that only vaguely resembles comedy. Will Ferrell is absurd and not my favorite, but he’s better in this subordinate role. And the premise of a bunch of grown men starting a fraternity with no affiliation to a university has potential. So it’s good. The only thing that came as a surprise to me, really, upon rewatch, is the fact that at least eighty percent of its content has no bearing on the central conflict and could have or even should have been cut without any impact to the story that was told. That would leave a film where all that happens is: a few guys start a fraternity because of a local university’s zoning rules, get pledges, sit around a couch watching a video about how they’re being kicked out, and then discover evidence that the dean was corrupt and they never should have been kicked out in the first place. Don’t believe me? Here’s my storyboard scene-for-scene:
Mitch chats with guys at a work conference
Mitch comes home to find his wife has orgies with strangers
Frank gets married
Mitch spills a drink on his old high school crush’s dress
Mitch moves into a house on the edge of his alma mater
Frank does a non-street-legal modification to a car; Frank’s wife warns him not to drink
Bernard throws Mitch a party
Frank chugs beers with college kids
Snoop Dogg performs
Frank goes streaking
Frank’s wife picks him up
Mitch wakes up next to a young girl he doesn’t remember sleeping with
Dean Pritchard shows up to tell Mitch and Bernard they’re being evicted from the house
Frank and his wife go to therapy where he talks about women’s underwear
Frank moves in with Mitch
Bernard starts a fraternity behind Mitch’s back, convinces Mitch to go along with it
Mitch, Frank, and Bernard abduct pledges in a black tinted van driving erratically
Dean Pritchard finds out about the fraternity from his assistant
Pledges drop cinder blocks that have been tied to their penises off a roof
Mitch tells his coworkers that they can’t join the fraternity
Nicole drops off a house-warming gift to Mitch
Frank leaves a message on his wife’s phone
Frank’s wife takes a blow-job class taught by Anthony Dick
Bernard throws a party for his son, dressed as a clown
Mitch catches Nicole’s boyfriend making out with a caterer
Frank shoots himself in the jugular with a tranquilizer and almost drowns in a pool
Dean Pritchard bribes the student body president to revoke the fraternity charter
Nicole meets Mitch about her lease and is interrupted because of a KY jelly issue
Mitch loses a KY wrestling match
Bernard rebuffs a teenager’s sexual advances in the fraternity living room
Blue dies promptly upon seeing two topless girls at the KY wrestling match
Blue’s funeral, Frank sings
Frank’s new wife asks Frank for a divorce
Nicole’s boyfriend lies, claiming Mitch is a womanizing creep
Mitch and Nicole have breakfast and a small argument
The fraternity watches a video saying their charter has been revoked
Mitch convinces the fraternity to pass athletic and academic tests to regain their status
Frank rambles off nonsense about biotechnology to James Carville
The fraternity members collectively cheat on a written exam
Frank lights himself on fire
Bernard, Frank, and the fat guy perform surprisingly well at men’s gymnastics
Dean Pritchard tells them they failed because Blue scored zeroes, even though that math doesn’t work out and Blue is dead
The student body president plays the frat the evidence of the dean’s bribe
Frank chases Dean Pritchard down, steals the tape, gets beaten up
Nicole tells Mitch she broke up with her boyfriend as he’s moving out of the house
Frank screams at Mitch’s coworkers, now new pledges
Nicole’s boyfriend crashes his car into a fishing Dean Pritchard, both die
Anglel-Blue plays and sings Dust in the Wind on a piano in heaven
Vince Vaughn gets kicked out of a little league soccer game
Frank meets Mitch’s slutty ex girlfriend at a grocery store
So, that’s the whole film. Here’s my point. It’s not that it’s not funny; it’s that the funny doesn’t actually relate to their idea most of the time. This is the list modified to include only the scenes essential to the central conflict.
Mitch moves into a house on the edge of his alma mater
Dean Pritchard shows up to tell Mitch and Bernard they’re being evicted from the house
Bernard starts a fraternity behind Mitch’s back, convinces Mitch to go along with it
Dean Pritchard finds out about the fraternity from his assistant
Dean Pritchard bribes the student body president to revoke the fraternity charter
The fraternity watches a video saying their charter has been revoked
Mitch convinces the fraternity to pass athletic and academic tests to regain their status
They collectively cheat on a written exam
Bernard, Frank, and the fat guy perform surprisingly well at men’s gymnastics
Dean Pritchard tells them they failed because Blue scored zeroes, even though that math doesn’t work out and Blue is dead
The student body president plays the frat the evidence of the dean’s bribe
Frank chases Dean Pritchard down, steals the tape, gets beaten up
This is a great format if your goal is to have a movie that can be turned on at any time for any length of time without the audience needing to worry about remembering context. Because there is none. Old School is a nearly random smattering of 2003 comedy that is only a real story on a skeletal level, but I guess that’s not the worst thing for a movie to be.