- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
The whole plot is a shambles. And yet none of this matters much when you're laughing as hard as this film makes you laugh.
-
80Will Ferrell is a fearless comedian, and he commits completely to his insanity in the film, and that makes it work.
-
80It's blissfully, pants-wettingly funny from beginning to end.
-
80In terms of sheer belly-laugh count, this one's in the same plentiful company as "There's Something About Mary" and "Road Trip."
-
80Starts out silly, gets sillier by the minute, and frequently had me and most of the people around me in stitches.
-
75It's also a message movie, about as weighty as Lara Flynn Boyle and twice as absurd. But I'd like to report that I had an excellent time.
-
70The 1978 frat-house classic "Animal House," starring the late, great John Belushi, is the model for testosterone-mad comedies such as this, and while it hasn't that film's scope or finesse, Old School does have Ferrell, a man clearly in touch with his inner Belushi.
-
70Ferrell owns the screen.
-
70The disconnect between what men say and what they do makes Old School funnier than most of its gags and it also invests the movie with curious pathos.
-
70It’s party time, and the movie is wild and crude without being mean--it’s a comedy of infantile regression, “Animal House” for grownups. [17 March 2003, p. 154]
-
Ultimately, the immensely personable and talented lead actors manage to push aside the disquieting notion that this group of men are so emotionally stunted that they're happy to abandon their wives and children for the sake of a party.
-
63In lieu of a toga party, one scene treats us to an octogenarian fraternity member wrestling two topless townie lookers slathered in KY Gel. Hey, there's no stopping progress.
-
63Old School is exactly what director Todd Phillips intends for it to be: low-brow, moronic to a fault, and occasionally side-splittingly funny.
-
60A good laugh is almost never a bad thing and almost every frame of Old School is grade A goofball fun.
-
60This year's kinder, gentler "Animal House."
-
58Under Reitman's deanship, Ferrell lets his freak flag fly and Vaughn unlooses a notably funny, light-on-his-feet lunkheadedness.
-
58To call the haphazard string of gags a story is to give it far too much credit, but it is funny in a blunt, profane frat boy way, thanks to the bulldozing energy of Ferrell, the smarmy manipulations of Vaughn and the anything-for-a-laugh excess of Phillips.
-
50Only fitfully funny, except when Ferrell is onscreen -- then you won't stop laughing.
-
50A deliberately stupid movie whose crazy charm wins you over in the end.
-
50The saving grace of Old School is that it has about a dozen funny moments. These moments aren't mildly funny or chuckle funny but really funny.
-
50Speaking of funny things, director Todd Phillips has been down this path before in "Road Trip." There, toiling in the same lame genre, he actually showed a hint of comic ingenuity. Here, the hint has dwindled to a hoarse whisper.
-
50The frat brothers have some surprisingly touching moments, and their diverse but perfectly matched personalities generate a fairly steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments.
-
50Phillips and co-writer Scot Armstrong waste too much time on a silly love-interest subplot for Wilson; that time is much better served by the frat-boy idiocies, like Frank beer-bonging himself into streaking.
-
50With little cohesion and no respect for the editing process, Old School often feels like someone threw film clips on the floor and strung them together willy-nilly.
-
50Like a half-empty glass of Coke that's been sitting out for a couple of days; sure, it looks like cola, but one sip tells you exactly what's missing.
-
40A comedy with a terrific premise and little else.
-
40A dumb guy comedy about dumb guys by dumb guys and for dumb guys.
-
38The movie is never more than the sum of its scattershot jokes; it's sloppily put together, with scenes seemingly cut mid-dialogue.
-
38Old School has all the ingredients of an uproarious campus comedy, but it lacks a boisterous short-order cook who could whip up a food fight or three.
-
30A flatland of lowest-common-denominated retro-collegiate wackiness.
-
25The movie has been slapped together by director Todd Phillips, who careens from scene to scene without it occurring to him that humor benefits from characterization, context and continuity. Otherwise, all you have is a lot of people acting goofy.
-
25If you're going to be offensive, by all means be offensive. Be tasteless! Be "There's Something About Mary." But at least stick to your guns, and don't wuss out when it counts.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 38 out of 48
-
Mixed: 4 out of 48
-
Negative: 6 out of 48
-
5
-
8