Old School (2003)
★★½ — Old School (2003)
There's a specific kind of early 2000s comedy that asks you to park your brain at the door, crack open a beer, and just go with it. Old School is exactly that film. It's built on a premise that's inherently daft and kind of wonderful in its stupidity: three blokes pushing forty decide the answer to their dreary adult lives is to start a fraternity. Not therapy. Not a holiday. A frat house. And for a while, you're almost on board with that logic.
Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Luke Wilson make for a likeable enough trio, and the film coasts on their chemistry and the sheer silliness of what they're doing. Ferrell is the standout, no question. His Frank the Tank is genuinely unhinged in the best possible way, and there are moments where he goes so completely off the rails that you can't help but laugh. Vaughn, meanwhile, does his Vaughn thing: rapid-fire delivery, effortless swagger, the same character he's played in a dozen films. It works here. It just doesn't surprise you.
The problem is that outside of those two, the film doesn't have much to say, and it doesn't seem particularly bothered about that. There's a thread running through it about men refusing to grow up, about the terror of settling down and becoming someone dull and responsible, and if the film had pushed on that a bit harder it could've been genuinely sharp. But it doesn't push. It prods at it once or twice, gets a bit uncomfortable, and then retreats into another party scene or sex gag. You're left with a satire that doesn't really satirise anything.
It's got all the ingredients you'd expect from the era: wild parties, a pantomime villain dean, awkward encounters that are meant to be shocking and mostly just feel dated, and a soundtrack that sounds exactly like a 2003 party mix CD someone found in a box in their mum's attic. There's comfort in that familiarity, I suppose. It knows what it is. But knowing what you are and doing something interesting with it are two very different things, and Old School almost always settles for the former.
I kept thinking of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), another film from this same raunchy comedy wave that also leans heavily on one magnetic lead going delightfully unhinged. The difference is that Anchorman has a comic vision behind it, a real point of view, jokes that build on each other and land with some kind of precision. Old School throws things at the wall with considerably less aim. A few stick. Plenty don't.
And it's not bad, I want to be clear about that. Calling it bad would be overstating it in the other direction. There are genuine laughs here, a few moments where it earns its runtime, and Ferrell alone makes it worth half an hour of your time on a slow Sunday afternoon. But forgettable is the right word. You'll finish it, enjoy bits of it, and by Tuesday you'll struggle to recall the plot in any detail. It's comfort food that doesn't particularly nourish.
Two and a half stars. Mid-tier, by-the-numbers stuff from an era that produced both better and much worse. If you're deep in a nostalgia kick for early 2000s comedies, you'll find enough here to keep you going. Just don't go in expecting it to be more than it is, because it very much isn't.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2003 | Watched: 2025-08-19
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Todd Phillips: Joker (2019) · Road Trip (2000)
More with Luke Wilson: Blue Streak (1999)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
