| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
Arriving amid the traditionally withered harvest of January releases, Orange County is peachy.
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| 80 |
Rolling Stone
It's the new year's first happy surprise.
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| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The movie is hipper than its L.A. establishment credentials would suggest.
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| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It's one of those movies like "Ghost World" and "Legally Blonde" where the description can't do justice to the experience.
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| 70 |
LA Weekly
This genial comedy is as unambitious and, at times, as funny as its high concept.
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| 63 |
Miami Herald
Even if the whole of Orange County is less than the sum of its parts, Jack Black is not the only thing to like about this movie.
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| 63 |
Baltimore Sun
Delivers an unexpected sweetness.
|
| 60 |
Variety
A fine group of comic performers manages to keep the screen worth looking at despite the obsessively one-note nature of this curious matchup between MTV Films and producer Scott Rudin.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Starts out deliriously funny but allows sentimentality to squeeze it to a pulp by the time it's over.
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| 60 |
Salon.com
A feebly pleasant surprise: It's not as cheap, loud and sleazy as it might have been, but it's also too eagerly well-meaning and indistinct to really stick. It's a piece of mildly entertaining, inoffensive fluff.
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| 60 |
Film Threat
Not only harmless, but actually quite funny and charming.
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| 50 |
USA Today
Every performer puts vigor into an otherwise limp exercise, as if word were out that this would be the last comedy ever made about late-adolescent concerns.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Under different direction, Orange County might have drawn a savvy cult audience that would appreciate the black-comedy possibilities of Shaun's idolatry of a certain writing professor (Kline), the homoerotic overtones inherent in best-buddydom and pyromania as a sexual turn-on.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
This is a picture with a perfect sense of proportion: There's a mini-Hanks, a mini-Spacek and a mini-Kasdan in a mini-comedy that's minimally entertaining.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
An almost successful comedy.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
Hardly the idiosyncratic Mickey Finn you'd expect from the men behind 1998's underrated "Zero Effect" and 2000's discomfort-splooge "Chuck & Buck."
|
| 50 |
ReelViews
Were it not for the high profile names of "Hanks" and "Kasdan", this would be a perfect candidate for a direct-to-video release.
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
The gags and subplots, rather than adding up to sustained hilarity, compete with each other.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
For my money, what keeps it bearable is mainly the mugging of the older folks -- not just Jack Black, who steals the show in a part seemingly inspired by John Belushi, but Catherine O'Hara, John Lithgow, and cameos by Chevy Chase, Lily Tomlin, and Kevin Kline.
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| 40 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Ultimately it lacks even the conviction of its own nastiness.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
This ORANGE is a lemon.
|
| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
It's a movie at war with itself. The first half, more or less, is witty about California culture, or the lack of it, in a "Clueless" kind of way, which is a very good way.
|
| 38 |
Charlotte Observer
Flat as a Moravian cookie, flat as a sailor's wallet after a month in port, flat as the average European's impression of the Earth in A.D. 800.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
In any case, the presence of O'Hara, Kline, Ramis, Black, Tomlin and John Lithgow (who plays Shaun's father) serve mainly to underline the feebleness of the screenplay and the slackness of the direction.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
Black delivers the best line (“Do you want me to get naked and start the revolution?”), and Lithgow scores a giggle for calling his ex-wife “coyote ugly” to her face, but neither of them can disguise this lemon.
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| 30 |
Washington Post
Strictly a vanity vehicle with a mess of star babies on board. That would be just fine if it didn't take us down the same old cul-de-sac. But it does, and with a vengeance.
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| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It should have been a cut above the usual teen comedy. But it touches the same old bases in the same old dumb ways.
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| 20 |
Washington Post
The movie is less than nothing special. The movie veers between pretentiousness (oh, the plight of the instant, start-up Artist) and vacuousness.
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