'Old School' recalls beer-soaked college comedy classics

Beer funnels, sex with high school students and an inflatable tub full of KY Jelly.

Yep, it's back to school for director Todd Phillips who returns to the theme of college hijinks in "Old School," the follow up to his 2000 feature film debut "Road Trip."

Just don't expect another "Road Trip." Even with more experience both in front of and behind the camera this time around, "Old School" does not live up to the legacy of Phillips' first feature film.

"Old School" recycles plots from such classic college comedies as "Animal House" — which Ivan Reitman also produced — "Back to School" and "PCU."

Although the story is a little tired, the film is anything but.

Mitch Martin, played by Luke Wilson, after returning home early from a business trip, opens the door to the house he shares with his fiancée Heidi (Juliette Lewis) to find a sketchy Todd Phillips, making a cameo in his own picture.

Phillips opens with the following greeting: "I'm here for the gang bang!" and thus begins Mitch's new life as a single, 30-something year-old frat guy.

After leaving Heidi and her unconventional sex habits, Mitch rents a house on the campus of Harrison University where he and his best friends Beanie (Vince Vaughn) and Frank (Will Ferrell) had gone to school. Beanie, an unhappily married millionaire electronics storeowner, convinces Mitch to use his new house as party central and organizes the bacchanalia.

The orgiastic partying is threatened when Harrison's Dean Gordon Pritchard (Jeremy Piven) rezones Mitch's house for "college use only" in an attempt to drive the merrymakers off campus.

As Beanie sees it, the only solution is to put the house in the service of the university, at least nominally, by starting a fraternity.

The fraternity attracts a wide range of pledges, including several misfit Harrison students, a 79-year-old bum named Blue and some of Mitch's law firm colleagues.

The frat's success further irritates Pritchard who makes it his personal mission to shut them down.

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The strengths of "Old School" lie not in its predictable story line but in its outrageous scenes like Ferrell stumbling naked onto the stage where Snoop Dogg and Warren G are performing for a crowd of coeds.

"We're going streaking through the quad," he yells, a potential rallying cry for Princetonians nostalgic for the Nude Olympics.

At least you get to see plenty of Ferrell's fleshy rear.

Eating club initiations leaders could also probably pick up a few pointers from the "Old School" gang. KY Jelly wrestling, although found too intense by the film's older pledges, offers hours of fun for a campus as well toned and virile as Princeton's.

Todd Phillips is familiar with college campuses where frat life is a little more pronounced than at Princeton from his documentary film "Frat House."

"Frat House" garnered the Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries at Sundance in 1998, but because of objections from the subjects, it was never released to the wider HBO audience for which it was intended.

In producing "Frat House," Phillips and then-partner Andrew Gurland were actually hazed and initiated themselves, a process that put Gurland in the hospital.

Still, the approach to hazing in "Old School" is purely humorous, making light of any accidents that happen along the way.

The idea for "Old School" came from Court Crandall, a friend of Phillips' who was especially taken with "Frat House." "Old School" reunites Phillips and writing collaborator Scot Armstrong, who developed Crandall's idea into a screenplay, with Reitman's production team at The Montecito Picture Company, the same creative forces behind "Road Trip."

"Road Trip" alumni Seann William Scott and Andy Dick also make cameo appearances in the film, as Scott revisits the theme of male love that he explored as Stifler in "American Pie 2." Now a petting zoo operator with a mullet, you can see Scott locking tongues with a severely tranquilized Ferrell. Dick is just as memorable as an eccentric fellatio guru who teaches private seminars with phallic fruit to married women.

Expect a great 80s soundtrack to carry the movie along including hits from Whitesnake and Duran Duran and a profane rendition of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by the Dan Band, a seven-piece wedding band so scandalously awful they rank down there with Jon Lovitz and Steve Buscemi in the "Wedding Singer."

It might be impossible to separate Ferrell from his roles on Saturday Night Live. Some of his scenes in "Old School" do have a sketch comedy feel. But his often over-the-top performance is as entertaining as ever especially because his character is so oblivious to his own preposterousness.

Vaughn is essentially reprising his breakthrough role from "Swingers," only now the fast-talking would-be roué is saddled with a bothersome morality brought on by a wife and young children. He's still charismatic and fun to watch as the frat's dark spiritual leader.

Wilson is strong as Mitch, the straight man to Ferrell's absurdity and Vaughn's wheeling-dealing style. Wilson's credentials are formidable after his multiple collaborations with Wes Anderson and brother Owen on films such as "The Royal Tenenbaums" and his role on "Legally Blonde." His subtlety contrasts well with Vaughn and Ferrell.

The movie abounds with inside jokes. The casting of Jeremy Piven as Pritchard will seem particularly ironic to those who remember Piven's role as Droz in "PCU."

With more hair and massive glasses, Piven plays the kind of spiteful administrator he and his band of outcasts rebelled against in the 1994 comedy.

Although the supporting female cast is marginal to the movie, the earthy beauty Ellen Pompeo (Moonlight Mile) gives a good show as Mitch's new love interest.

The film is entertaining and full of laughs, albeit somewhat unoriginal. "Old School" opens nationwide Feb. 21, but you can catch a free sneak preview tonight at Frist brought to you by the Undergraduate Film Organization and Dreamworks Pictures. The film is rated R for strong sexual content, language and that staple of good college movies: gratuitous nudity.