Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Damn! Did anyone like this movie? I have yet to see a good or even mixed review cross the AICN desk. So far, it sounds like this is one big mess, and that just depressed me. Talk about a cast I wanted to see in something great. This thing's got credentials to spare. Let's see how Carnegie Ape thinks things went wrong...
Greetings again all -
My second screening in as many nights, last night I got to check out the movie Orange County in a work-print stage. Orange County was directed by Jake Kasdan who wrote and directed the FANTASTIC movie Zero Effect. Sadly, since this is an MTV Films production, he was not allowed to write this movie but had to direct off a script by Mike White who is currently writing for Pasadena by way of Dawson's Creek. The movie has one of the hugest collection of people I'd like to see acting all in one place - Colin Hanks, Jack Black, Schuyler Fisk, Catherine O'Hara, John Lithgow, Lily Tomlin, Harold Ramis, Kevin Kline, Ben Stiller, Leslie Mann. Also, coincidentally, the movie was partially produced by Scott Rudin (Marci X, Wednesday's screening) so maybe he just wanted his films screened early enough to get public input.
Anyways, to put it mildly, the film sucked. The plot is that Colin Hanks plays an Orange County surfer dude who decides to write after one of his friends gets permanently wiped out catching a 40 foot tsunami-wave. He writes all the time after searching for answers to life and finds a book written by a famous author who teaches English at Stanford. All he does all day and all night is write, even hanging with his liberal, insane animal rights girlfriend (Fisk) and his buddies. He decides it's his mission in life to become a writer and since his idol teaches at Stanford, that's where he decides to go and applies only there and nowhere else. This would be fine (straight "A"s, 1520 SAT, class president, etc.) except for a mistake by his college counselor (Tomlin) which gets him denied from Stanford. The rest of the movie revolves around Hanks trying to get into Stanford, including driving up there with his drug dealer-on-parole brother (Jack Black).
The problem with this movie is that it goes for quantity over quality. The entire cast SHOULD be great, but each person really only gets about three to five minutes of screen time (or less) except for Hanks, Fisk, and Black. Again, if people need a "this meets that" breakdown, the best I can do this time is The Stoned Age meets Better Off Dead. Though, I would warn people, this movie is nowhere near as funny as either of those films and it's not an exact pedigree. Let's break down into good and bad again...
The good: Jack Black, man - I thought he would suck in this flick from his first couple of appearences, but he was just like a snowball he got better the more the movie went on. His insanely manic personality (combined with his drug usage) made him incredibly funny. Schuyler Fisk was great in the role, and in an MTV Films movie where there are plenty of scenes with cheerleaders it's nice that the most attractive girl in the film was not the lead nor the girlfriend. I think, though I could be wrong, there was a quick cameo of Samm Levine and it was nice to see him again.
The bad: Colin Hanks. It pains me to say this as I LOVED him in Roswell (and love Roswell), but if this is why he left the show he might as well join David Caruso at a bar and commiserate. He could not hold down the fort as the lead in this film and seemed to be overacting (in the bad way). The writing/story was awful. If you have one writer with a pedigree of Freaks and Geeks, Zero Effect, and Undeclared and another writer with Freaks and Geeks, Dawson's Creek, and Pasadena you don't choose the second one.
Basically, you can rent this on a weekend if you need something to watch while stoned or drunk, but other than that I'd not really recommend it. Yes, even though it was a workprint, I don't give it much hope when it's finished as the workprint elements were not what turned me off from the film. The sad thing is, while Marci X was the better film in my opinion, Orange County will likely make more money.
Carnegie Ape out.
Oh, well. At least we have the possibility of a Jake Kasdan-helmed ZERO EFFECT TV series to look forward to. Bring it on!
"Moriarty" out.
