At the beginning of Orange County, Shaun (Colin Hanks), a typical surfboarding high school kid in Orange County, discovers a novel written by a Stanford English teacher. Shaun describes the book as a perfect description of what it’s like to be a teenager and is so motivated by this book he sets out to write one of his own experiences. Later in the film, Shaun meets this Stanford teacher (Kevin Kline), who praises Shaun’s novella for its depth and humor.

The film is constantly talking of greatly written stories about the human experience, but Orange County is not one of them. I wanted it to be the kind of story it describes, but Orange County itself is anything but. It’s a weak MTV story, with low-brow humor and characters that are not nearly as compelling as it seems to want them to be.

Shaun wants to go to Stanford to work with this professor, but everything seems to be going against him. The problems arise when the wrong transcript is sent to Stanford and Shaun gets rejected. He gets no help from his divorced parents (Catherine O’Hara and John Lithgow), or his girlfriend (Schuyler Fisk), all of whom want him to stay in Orange County.

As a last resort, Shaun allows his low life brother, Lance (Jack Black), to drive him and his girlfriend up to Palo Alto to try to talk to the dean of admissions (Harold Ramis). After multiple mishaps and problems, including Lance’s inadvertently burning down the Stanford administration building, Shaun comes to realize he doesn’t need to go to Stanford to become a good writer. But it’s still not convincing that he would turn down an Ivy League school to go to some community college.

As shallow as it all is, there’s something I like about it. Jack Black is funny when he gets screen time and Colin Hanks is fairy sympathetic as the hard luck case. There’s a certain sweetness that underlies most of the film and it pays off appropriately.

Year: