Orange County

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Arriving amid the traditionally withered harvest of January releases, Orange County is peachy.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's the new year's first happy surprise.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The movie is hipper than its L.A. establishment credentials would suggest.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's one of those movies like "Ghost World" and "Legally Blonde" where the description can't do justice to the experience.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

This genial comedy is as unambitious and, at times, as funny as its high concept.

Miami Herald Charles Savage

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.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Delivers an unexpected sweetness.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Starts out deliriously funny but allows sentimentality to squeeze it to a pulp by the time it's over.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

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.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Not only harmless, but actually quite funny and charming.

USA Today Mike Clark

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.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

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.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

An almost successful comedy.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Hardly the idiosyncratic Mickey Finn you'd expect from the men behind 1998's underrated "Zero Effect" and 2000's discomfort-splooge "Chuck & Buck."

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Were it not for the high profile names of "Hanks" and "Kasdan", this would be a perfect candidate for a direct-to-video release.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The gags and subplots, rather than adding up to sustained hilarity, compete with each other.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Ultimately it lacks even the conviction of its own nastiness.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

This ORANGE is a lemon.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

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.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

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.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It should have been a cut above the usual teen comedy. But it touches the same old bases in the same old dumb ways.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The movie is less than nothing special. The movie veers between pretentiousness (oh, the plight of the instant, start-up Artist) and vacuousness.