are is the Saturday Night Live alum who makes the transition to the big screen with dignity these days. Remember Jon Lovitz? Not anymore you don’t. Dana Carvey? Well, there was Wayne’s World, but, hey, there was also Wayne’s World 2. Of the recent graduates who thought they might be Ready For Prime Time, Chris Rock has been uneven, Molly Shannon unseen and Phil Hartman and Chris Farley un-, well, living, leaving Mike Meyers as the show’s only bonafide superstar – and his best film is a decade old.


But then there’s Will Ferrell – who until recently seemed a lock for first place in the Phil Hartman Memorial Hammy Character Du Jour Competition for his work in recent films like Zoolander and Austin Powers, as well as just about every recent skit-to-theater film SNL had to offer (The Ladies Man, Superstar and—his own limp star vehicle—A Night At the Roxbury). With each successive film, Ferrell seemed increasingly destined to be “That-guy-from-SNL” until some unsuspecting sitcom producer got a hold of him and had him play that fucking male cheerleader character until he died. And so, as funny as he was, his decision to leave the best-damned George W. Bush and Neil Diamond impressions in the dust seemed questionable to say the least.


Which makes Ferrell’s turn as Frank “The Tank” in the back-to-the-frat Old School that much better. Where virtually every other role Ferrell has played has been cartoon-ish—the poodle-coifed Zoolander baddie and his “I’m still alive!!” toady in Austin Powers among them—Old School gives Ferrell his first chance to play a real, fleshed-out human being – and a damned funny one at that. Though Frank isn’t the film’s main character—that goes to the affable Luke (The Royal Tenenbaums) Wilson—he steals the film by about a Hollywood mile.


Brought to you by the same team that made the peerless teen-romp Road Trip, Old School centers around three buddies, Mitch (Wilson), Frank and Beanie, a Crazy Eddie-type stereo king played with bored relish by Vince Vaughn, who start a frat on the local college campus to ward off middle age. Or something like that. In any event, the trio gathers a motley crew, comprised of a 300 lb. momma’s boy, an 89-year old war veteran and the like, to pledge. By the time the dean, played by Jeremy (PCU) Piven, shows up a half-hour in to the film to shut the frathouse down, you realize that Old School has no greater ambition than being an Animal House for the thirty-something marriage-dreading male.


And at that, the film mostly succeeds, largely on the strength of the just-married Frank, to whom Ferrell gives just the right amount of immaturity bubbling under the surface before giving way to the party animal within (when a perplexed woman comments on the plastic blow-up doll he’s clutching, Ferrell looks at the doll and dismissively responds, “She’s alright,” before moving onto the next topic). Unable to leave behind the days of souping up his red Camaro, it’s more than you “know that guy”; hell, at times in your life, you’ve been that guy.


The other main characters are only marginally less compelling. As the lead cast into a premature midlife crisis when he loses his longtime girlfriend, Wilson’s Mitch is sweet and endearingly unsure of himself; he might bag the hot blonde on the rebound, but he’s also capable of embarrassing himself miserably at a wedding and taking everyone down with him. The trio is capped by the catalyst, Vaughn’s Beanie, who eggs on their hijinks from a position of domestic and financial comfort; as a happily married, wealthy entrepreneur who’s just beginning to pack on the pounds, he’s living vicariously through Mitch and Frank’s every success and failure. And there are many, disastrous children’s birthday parties and frat initiation-rituals gone horribly wrong among them.


All this might lead you to believe that Old School’s a surefire DVD purchase, a bong-hitting slam dunk. And you’d almost be right. But as much as it pains me to say, Old School is as much shake as it is bud. Part of the reason is due to a glut of underused characters: Mitch’s love interest is the requisite Hottie With A Heart Of Gold, but even by Boring Love Interest standards she puts us to sleep; as her egotistical boyfriend, Late Night’s Craig Kilbourne fares little better—he isn’t even given enough space to be all that obnoxious; and worst of all, as the nerd-turned-authority-figure with a grudge, is Piven; only a few years ago in films like the criminally-underrated Very Bad Things he was capable of brilliantly oozing frat-boy charm and malevolence in a single breath. Here, Piven is completely wasted, with nary a single funny line. It’s almost as if he traded his sense of humor for those ill-advised hair plugs.


But mainly, it seems like the writers nodded off before writing a proper conclusion. And see, here’s the thing: when it comes to the kind of comedy Old School’s trying to deliver, I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m not too demanding. Stick to the formula and give me a few big laughs – and yeah: feel free to throw in the gratuitous tit shots. Yet somehow the movie fucks it up.


Don’t get me wrong: there’s Co-ed Naked KY Wrestling and Will Ferrell sticking his big white ass in women’s faces, so the latter two are definitely taken care of. But the movie spends an hour-and-a-half primed to tell us that growing up is painful and inevitable but it’s still rewarding – that going back to school is a blast, but temporary thing. That porking a hot single mom in a Whitesnake jacket really is the best of all possible worlds. And then...it manages to ditch it all in the last five minutes for no good reason. Really: the whole idea of these kind of films—American Pie, Road Trip, etc.—is that I’m supposed to identify with this shit. Yet somehow I feel weird about a movie that tells me without a shred of irony that it’s ok if I ditch the wife I love a week after marrying her and wind up as a single, forty year-old college DJ simply...because.


Ok, so these questions may not bother everyone, and Will Ferrell’s amazing, which is why you should still go see Old School with a couple of buddies at the matinee on the weekend. You’ll likely laugh your ass off, especially at that profane wedding band. Come to think of it, maybe they knew something the lucky couple didn’t. But especially if you’re engaged or just thinking about getting hitched, don’t say I didn’t warn you.