Orange County

Orange County (2002) isn't offensive, exactly, but it isn't a very good movie, either. It's about an aspiring writer named Shaun (Colin Hanks), who's convinced that he needs to go to Stanford and study with a writer he's stuck on. The movie is about the various misadventures that take place in one 24-hour period during which Shaun tries to get accepted, after the dippy college counselor at his high school (Lily Tomlin in a bit role) sends in the wrong transcript and he gets rejected. That's an interesting idea, but the writer of Orange County, Mike White (who plays a small role as Shaun's English teacher), is running on empty from the very beginning.

The earnest performance of Colin Hanks (son of Tom Hanks) is one of this movie's strongest attributes, yet the writing is so undeveloped that you never really buy his whole aspiring-literary-talent thing. He's a nice guy. That's about all we get.  We see him transform from stoned surfer to would-be Ernest Hemingway, but there's no real impetus for his transformation, other than the sudden death of one of his surfing buddies, an obvious plot device. And if you're paying any attention at all to the movie, you'll see how many of these plot devices White relies on in his script. For example, Shaun's brother, Lance (played by Jack Black), is a ne'er-do-well junkie who's mooching off his family, and it's his stupid behavior that bungles a meeting between Shaun and an influential Stanford board member. Later, it's Lance who sets up an astoundingly contrived chain of events that gets Shaun into the school.

This movie doesn't know how to show its feelings, such as disappointment, frustration, grief, or joy, and so it turns to catchy pop songs to convey its emotions by proxy. Is it any wonder that a movie produced by a music conglomerate like MTV fails in its grasp for authenticity? You start to think they just made it so they could sell the soundtrack. Perhaps the audience saw through this: Orange County wasn't exactly a hit.

There's a slew of talent associated with the film, but don't expect much when the material is this sloppy. Director Jake Kasdan (who helmed last year's abysmal Bad Teacher) has a sitcom-level mentality, and he doesn't know how to work with the actors. They're all emotionally maxed-out characters at the beginning, and so there's nowhere for them to go emotionally. They fizzle. Catherine O'Hara has a few good moments as Shaun's drunk mother, but even she isn't allowed to reach her wonderfully loony potential. (She does some similar (but better) work in an episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.) Kevin Kline puts in a brief spot as the idolized writer, whose appearance marks the film's climax, but he's reduced to the role of the "wise artiste," providing Shaun (and the movie) with some tripe about writing. When you see a performer like Kevin Kline playing such a boring role, it gives you little hope for the future of comedy in movies. Also present are John Lithgow as Shaun's dad, Chevy Chase as the high school principal, Brett Harrison and Kyle Howard as Shaun's perpetually stoned surfer buddies, and Schuyler Fisk (daughter of Sissy Spacek) as Shaun's good-natured girlfriend, the only sane person in his life. And Jack Black, who is an often dizzying force of energy, is all over the place with his mugging. (There are too many stoners in this movie for any of them to stand out, for one thing.) He needs a good director to channel his crazed brilliance. Without that, he's utterly unfunny. 

The really ironic thing is that Orange County presents the adults as complete morons: the guidance counselor's gaffe generates the entire meandering plot, the parents are miserable, clinging people. They're divorced from each other and both in unhappy, unsuccessful re-marriages (for all the wrong reasons). The teachers are either stupid or disingenuous (or both). And yet, we're expected to believe that Shaun turned into a sophisticated, responsible young man amidst all this incompetency. And to top it off [SPOILER ALERT], the movie has the nerve to go Frank Capra on us at the end: Mom and Dad get back together, Son gets into Stanford via their generous financial donation to the school, he decides that home really is where the heart is, and we're all happily-ever-after-together. [END OF SPOILERS.] It's amazing that such an essentially square movie could come from the people at MTV, who seem so convinced that they are the purveyors of what's hip. Perhaps they're turning over a new leaf. They've learned that banality is safer than originality. Oh wait, that's not a new concept to them at all.

With Harold Ramis as the dean of admissions, Garry Marshall, Dana Ivey, Jane Adams, and Ben Stiller in an undistinguished cameo appearance as a firefighter.

Ghostbusters

The performers in Ghostbusters (1984) are better than the material. Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver have a fabulous chemistry, especially in the scenes where she's possessed by a centuries-old spirit, making advances toward Murray, who reacts with a wonderfully sarcastic indifference. Murray's natural comic abilities are the anchor of Ghostbusters. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis are constantly trying to catch up with him, but it's not because they aren't talented. Aykroyd plays the easily excitable Raymond, and Ramis is the uber-scientific, stiff, humorless Egon. The three of them are paranormal investigators who, after being ousted from a cushy research post at New York University, set up operations in an abandoned fire station. They're a sort of 911 service for supernatural emergencies. They have bizarre-looking paraphernalia: lasers that somehow trap the ghosts with their beams and confine them in an airtight box. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but then again, how could it?

The film relies on at least two montages to carry its story, which is never a good sign. (It was a common tack of comedy films of the 80s and 90s, and has become a cliche.) Much like in Caddyshack, which Harold Ramis co-wrote and directed, and Murray co-starred in, you get the feeling that the filmmakers didn't have enough form to their ideas. And while Caddyshack has the mark of improvisational comedy that works for it, Ghostbusters could have used a little more structure to tighten some of the loose ends. It doesn't have the right build-up to it that it should have as a strong comic-horror film. Instead, there are grabs at ideas that sometimes work and sometimes don't. Fortunately, the cast lifts the material up.

Sigourney Weaver is a standout because she's such an imposing force as an actress. The crime of this movie is that so many great actors are short-changed. Annie Potts, as the blase secretary, injects her own brand of droll humor in her scenes, but they aren't as many as you'd like them to be. And Rick Moranis plays a likeable chump, an accountant who's got the hots for Weaver's character, his neighbor. When he becomes possessed by a spirit, he's absolutely terrific, acting like a stoned klutz. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Written by Aykroyd and Ramis. The idea was apparently conceived by Aykroyd to be a vehicle for he and Saturday Night Live co-star John Belushi.

As a movie, Ghostbusters is uneven. There are some wonderful comic moments, such as a scene where Murray conducts a test on two college students to determine if they have psychic abilities, and uses it to hit on one of them, an attractive blonde co-ed. One of the other stand-out moments is the afore-mentioned encounter between Murray and the possessed Weaver, who's loose and wickedly funny because she's finally allowed to do something than play the straight woman. At other times, the jokes are hopelessly juvenile and detract from the stronger parts of the movie.

Also starring Ernie Hudson and William Atherton.