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Orange County
***1/2
Cinema Releases - November 8, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. USA.
82 minutes. Directed by Jake Kasdan. Written by Mike White. Starring Colin
Hanks, Jack Black, Kyle Howard, R.J. Knoll, Bret Harrison, Schuyler Fisk,
Mike White, Lily Tomlin, Chevy Chase, Natasha Melnick.
"Orange County" is a movie in which
a college admissions tutor is accidentally given Ecstasy pills, a
wheelchair-bound old man with a speech impediment rolls down a hill to smack
into a car door, and two surfers strap dynamite to a surfboard because they
think blowing it up would be a cool thing to do. In its surface and tempo,
the film is teen comedy about eccentric characters getting up to crazy
mischief.
But there's more to it. Some movies make us laugh.
Others get us laughing a lot. And then there are those films that, while
staying broad and silly, engage us in constant fits of laughter, until we
find ourselves surprised at how much we care about the story, and end up
walking out not only satisfied but also somewhat touched.
The star is Colin Hanks, the baby-faced 24-year
old son of Tom. He plays a California university applicant named Shaun Brumder,
who last year was just another surfer, before one of his buddies died, and
he did a lot of thinking, and found a great book on the beach, and decided
he wanted to become a writer. Now he wants to go to Stanford, to study under
the inspirational author Marcus Skinner (played by an actor who goes unbilled,
and whose identity is one of the movie's nicest surprises).
There is a mixup: Shaun's idiotic guidance counsellor
sends the wrong test scores off to Stanford -- those of an illiterate named
Shane Brainerd -- and our hero finds himself screwed. Jack Black plays Shaun's
brother Bud, a well-meaning but drug-addled slob who needs excessive amounts
of energy and direction just to collect the mail; Bud offers to drive his
sibling to Stanford and clear things up, but that journey, and the lead-up
to it, do of course end up being far more riddled with slapstick obstacles
than Shaun can bear to take.
We get some outrageous comic set pieces, including
a fire, several chases and the inevitable fall from a balcony. Most of the
comedy, however, comes from the characters: Black, as ever, becomes the most
memorable thing in his scenes without stopping the action. There's Catherine
O'Hara as Shaun's shrieking, drunken, neurotic mother. The supporting players
include an English teacher played by the film's writer, Mike White, who
encourages his students to associate the title "Romeo and Juliet" with the
name Leonardo DiCaprio before eventually including a functional reminder
about that Shakespeare guy. (His students are not smart enough to notice
they're being short-changed, but no matter: One girl, barely able to read,
manages to discern that, "It says here I...uh... got into...
Yale!")
Hanks is not just the son of a big actor, but
a genuine talent, with a distinctive enough look to let us forget his famous
name. He's sincerely, charmingly stressed throughout this movie, and along
with the emphases of the screenplay, he turns the gimmick of a straight man
surrounded by loons into a genuinely perceptive piece of comic invention
about the frustration of the creative personality when surrounded by an
environment that threatens to make it lazy or somehow hold it
back.
"Orange County" makes explicit the underlying
reason why it works so well, when Hanks finally gets to talk to someone who
understands his exasperation, and gets the following lesson: "Every good
writer has a conflicted relationship with the place he grew up. The thing
about your writing is that, underneath it all, you really have knowledge
and love of your characters."
That's it: The film paints a lot of nutty people
in very specific ways, but the people are acting in the only ways they know
how, and ultimately, we care for them, no matter how far off the mark they
get. The editing and photography have a giddy sense of fun about California's
frenzied quirks, and the casting does a great job of hiring actors whose
faces make us smile from happy memories. A sample list of names: Chevy Chase,
Lily Tomlin, Harold Ramis, John Lithgow, Ben Stiller.
This is not a deep film, it's a wacky one that
you can go see when you're feeling down and watch while munching a big packet
of jelly beans. But it serves its purpose above and beyond the call of duty,
and ends up not only wonderful comedy but surprisingly sweet and memorable
entertainment.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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