Shaun Brumder comes from a disfunctional family in Orange County. He wants to be a writer and his only goal in life is to be accepted to Stanford where he can study under his favorite author, Marcus Skinner. Because of a screw-up, he gets rejected, but decides to go on a road trip and convince the officials at Stanford to let him in. He brings along his supportive girlfriend, Ashley, and his slovenly drug-gargling brother, Lance. Hijinks ensue, things are resolved, then the credits roll. The end. I checked my watch; it wasn't even ninety minutes.
In fact, it's eighty-three minutes, making Orange County a movie so slight it feels like it could get caught under your fingernail. For me, that was actually part of its charm--although you don't leave the movie satisfied, neither do you exit completely annoyed and restless. By not trying to bloat itself out and trying to fool you, Orange County earns a few extra Jeff points.
It also adds a few more by casting Jack Black as brother, Lance, who does a terrific job of effectively acting as though he's under the influence of every drug in the world at once. Black's willingness to make himself look bad and never lose his swagger makes him my candidate for a Daffy Duck award; he makes the unleashing of the id seem natural and fun. Finally, rounding out the bonus Jeff points are the fact that the movie is about a young man wanting to be a writer, a manuever which almost always manages to work and does here, despite how calculated it feels. When the opening credits roll by with a gorgeous typewriter font to the lyrics of Cake's infectious "Shadow Stabbing" ("Adjectives on the typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter"), I was halfway to being charmed. And for the rest of the movie I stayed at that exact point. Despite these valuable bonus Jeff points (and an extra for getting Jane Adams into her bra and panties and for whoever the really cute brunette cheerleader was), the movie really makes no further leeway.
Everything about Orange County feels somewhat fresh and somewhat calculated--either the work of young men aspiring to be mercilessly efficient hacks, or the work of mercilessly efficient hacks posing as young men (what with the "famous offspring" angle the reviewers and interviewers take with this movie, it could go either way). Despite jabbing at the emptiness, first, of Orange County and then later Stanford itself, the movie really doesn't come off as anything other than timid and sweet, a cute kitten taking playful swipes at your finger. The presence of figures like Chevy Chase and Harold Ramis in the cameos (and Jack Black's ball-to-the-wall energy feeling similar in some ways to John Belushi's) really point out the difference in generations between Orange County and, say, Animal House which was also the work of guys caught between young adulthood and mercilessly efficient hackdom but was a dozen times more rowdy, anarchic and funny. Orange County makes its laughs, a salient point about how talent is fostered as much by opposition as by nurture (undercut by director Jake Kasdan's inability to really convey anything honest about Orange County, which is quite different from the tired L.A. parody presented here), and then gets to the end credits. As I recall, the people I saw the film with spent more time talking about the previews we had seen before the movie than the actual movie itself. I did, too. Orange County has some decent laughs, an okay soundtrack, and Jane March in her underwear on what must have been a cold night on the set; I'll be more than happy to chuckle and then fall asleep on the couch watching it when it hits HBO.