Orange County (2002)

Starring: Colin Hanks, Jack Black, Schuyler Fisk
Director: Jake Kasdan

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Paramount

Review Posted: 1.12.02

Spoilers: Minor

Rating: 2/4

By Craig Younkin.

The new movie "Orange County" is a film ripe with talent, but rotten in the way of ideas. The film stars two young actors who both happen to be related
to two very well respected older ones. Colin Hanks is the son of Tom Hanks and his co-star Schuyler Fisk is the daughter of Sissy Spacek. Not to mention
this film also stars Jack Black, a break out comic actor whose mix of energy and stupidity has made him the best thing about many of his previous efforts.

Add "Orange County" to that list; a film that has a wonderful comic cast including Catherine O'Hara, John Lithgow, Ben Stiller and Kevin Kline (both in cameos), and Harold Ramis, but falls so very short of being consistently funny.

The film centers around Shaun Brumder (Hanks), an Orange County, California surfer whose life changes one day when he reads a book called "Straight Jacket", a story about teenage life. The story reaches Shaun on a personal and emotional level and so he decides to drop the surfboard and pick up the pen and paper and become a writer.

Only he feels Orange County is not the writing environment he needs. This is the kind of place where if "Romeo and Juliet" were mentioned, the names
Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes would be matched long before Shakespeare. He finally decides to enroll in Stanford University, the college where the writer of his life-changing new book, Martin Skinner, is teaching.

Since Shaun has a long list of A's on his report card, he is considered by the school's guidance counselor (Lilly Tomlin) as a shoo-in. Only when she sends in a complete loser's transcript by mistake, Shaun is rejected.

Not only that, but when he tries to pad his way through to Stanford, his obnoxious family, which includes a drunken mother (O'Hara), a rich, but wheel chair ridden stroke victim for a step-father, and a drugged out loser for an older brother named Lance (Black), only make matters worse.

With all other options depleted, Shaun, his girlfriend Ashley (Fisk), and Lance decide to take a road trip to Stanford and beg the Dean of Admissions for acceptance.

It's at this point that "Orange County" takes a drop-off in laughs. What is set up as an eventful evening filled with comic hi-jinx is melted down to merely nothing by Mike White's bland script. Other than a couple of lame gags centering around an office fire and drugging the dean, the story doesn't even try, and instead takes a trip down sentimental lane as Shaun realizes that
his family is not the all-negative force against him that he has made them out to be.

White keeps this moral relatively simple, which accounts for why this film is only 83 minutes with the soundtrack blaring in the background.

If there were any reason to see "Orange County" though, Jack Black would be as good a reason as any. While most of the cast is left to pick up scraps
after a while, Blacks performance sheds light on a film that otherwise becomes low key and dry. This movie is proof that he is a comic talent, only it's too bad he's relegated to doing movies like this.

Colin Hanks and Schuyler Fisk are each two very likable newcomers, but neither one has the ability to carry a film yet, especially one that dissolves into nothing so quickly. "Orange County" begins as a very promising
teenage comedy, but then just peels off.

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