Short and Simple Review by WubsTheFadgerFirst off, this comedy is hilarious. The story is easy to follow, simple, and full of funny jokes and hilarious gags. I thought this film was genuinely funny and I truly enjoyed it. The characters are all funny and are all likeable.The acting is very good. Luke Wilson is by far the best. He is a likeable, funny, and good-hearted man looking for a fresh start. Vince Vaughn is also hilarious. His one-liners are always well timed. Will Ferrell plays a weird and sometime socially awkward man who at times can be very funny. I found his character to be the weakest and at times he was really annoying. Jeremy Piven's character is not well developed and very, very annoying.The pacing is a little slow and the runtime is overlong.Pros: Hilarious story, good jokes, Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn are both hilarious, and most the characters are likeableCons: Some slow pacing, an overlong runtime, Jeremy Piven and his bad performance, and Will Ferrell's character is a little annoyingOverall Rating: 7.0

This movie has great nostalgia value to us older people who went to university. Its also a very funny movie in itself. The best scene has Will Ferrell leading a campus nude streak down a suburban street. He encounters his wife who is shocked to see him. But not as shocked as Will Ferrell is when she points out no one is following him. Todd Philips directed this and he tends to divide opinion. Some claim he is unoriginal. I agree with that, but his sense of comic timing is quite good. He also seems to allow his actors a large playful space to perform. He looks to be going into more serious filmmaking now so it will be interesting to see how his career unfolds from now on.

The most distressing thing that happens when you're watching a comedy with a talented cast is to arrive midway through the movie and find yourself asking: 'Why am I not laughing?' That was the point I reached while watching "Old School", a raunchy comedy, with a wonderful cast that works hard but just can't seem to get the material off the ground."Old School" is a college frat house comedy, a far descendant of National Lampoon's Animal House, but focusing on a group of guys who are pushing 40 and can't seem to let go of the thrill of their college fraternity days. They are likable guys. There is Beanie (Vince Vaughn), a family man who feels trapped. There is Mitch (Luke Wilson), whose life changes after he catches his nymphomaniac girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) hosting an orgy in their bedroom. And there's Frank (Will Ferrell) once known as "Frank the Tank", a once-legendary party animal who is about get married and settle into a life of hanging curtains and picking through carpet samples.What lies at the heart of these guys is that they can't (or won't) let go of their glory years of wild parties, beer bongs and easy women. They refuse to grow up and move on. Mitch, who owns and appliance store with Beanie, buys a house near Harrison College, his old alma mater. However, after a particularly successful party, he is informed by the college's Dean Gordon Prichard (Jeremy Piven) that the house is zoned specifically for college social functions. He also reminds Mitch how he and his buddies use to pick on him back in college and with that, he happily presents an eviction notice.What to do? The guys come up with a plan to keep the house and rekindle their campus lifestyle. Through an administrative loophole they find that they are able to form a fraternity, which they do out of misfit student, middle-aged co-workers, and an elderly retiree who is somewhere north of 90. Many of these guys (including Mitch, Beanie and Frank) are not even students at Harrison, but that's part of the loophole, you see.What follows is suppose to be a raucous college campus comedy but the movie is so erratic that it never finds its center. Director Todd Phillips, who has made better films than this like "The Hangover" and "Starkey and Hutch", missteps here because his scenes don't come together out of characters or situations. They are a series of gags built out of raunchiness and bad taste. That's not a bad thing, but when the scenes don't come together, it just feels like a series of sketches.The lack of drive keeps the movie from building any kind of momentum. Plus, the characters, especially Mitch played by Luke Wilson, is so laid back that we never really understand how he got his reputation as a legendary party animal. Vince Vaughn's Beanie is believable as a party animal but he is so angry that you wonder how he ever has time to have fun. And Frank is such a genial good guy that we want him to break away from this pack and live his own life, or his own movie. He's the butt of embarrassments, especially when he gets drunk at a party and streaks down the middle of the highway. He has a scene late in the film when he is hit with a tranquilizer dart and ruins a kid's birthday party that is so labored and so mean that I found myself feeling sorry for the kid.I know I sound like a grump. I realize that I'm suppose to just sit back and enjoy these guys, but the movie never really goes anywhere. For me, I just didn't laugh very much. Wait! I did laugh at one gag involving the pledges who are required to tie cinder blocks to a certain portion of their anatomy and then drop them off a ledge. The payoff was so unexpected that I laughed. It was the one genuine laugh in the whole movie. If the screenwriter could have built on that, they might have had something.

"Hangover" Director Todd Phillips delivers a sort of "Animal House" throwback with "Old School". The film tells the story of Mitch, played by Luke Wilson, whose life basically falls apart before his eyes. He then decides to move in to a house on a college campus. Mitch's friends Frank and Beanie, played by Ferrell and Vaughn, convince him to start a fraternity within the college campus. Hilarity, of course, ensues. I found myself laughing a fair amount in this movie. There were a couple moments that were made me laugh hysterically, but overall the laughs came pretty moderately for me. Luke Wilson is great at playing. . .well the straight man - I feel that that's all he plays in movies unfortunately. And Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn are excellent as Wilson's flawed but fun friends. Overall I found the movie pretty darn hilarious. Even though some of the subplot stuff was rather annoyingly predictable, the movie still managed to make me laugh a bit.