Orange County

MOVIE:  Orange County

NUTSHELL:  An aspiring writer in Orange County is thwarted in his attempts to leave and attend Standford by his Jerry Springer-y family and then an hour and a half later you’re supposed to be totally okay with him staying there behind the orange curtain with the gross psychos.

GOOD THINGS:  Sigh. Ben Stiller, bless his heart. I like Mike White as an actor but what can he be thinking writing this swill? Sissy Spacek and Tom Hanks have nice looking children. Jack Black can at times be humorous. Kevin Kline is a handsome man who can act. Lily Tomlin is funny regardless of material.

BAD THINGS:  I sort of liked Zero Effect. Does this mean Lawrence Kasdan’s kid’s movies are going to suck from now on? Can’t someone put Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Ben Stiller, John Lithgow, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Garry Marshall, Chevy Chase, Jane Adams and these cute kids in a movie that is at least not enragingly stupid?

FEATURES:  A hellion child, a Ferrari, bad surfboard continuity, bonfires, sandals, cheerleaders, preppy headbands, college guys named Kip with bad teeth, drugs, latently homosexual surfing buddies, gratuitious narration, death by Tsunami surfing

UNCOMFORTABLE MOMENTS:  Urine drinking, pyromania, Jack Black in his underwear started to really depress me after a while. Perhaps the most uncomfortable moment was when the narration says something like: “Then I knew that the best place to be an aspiring writer was Orange County!”

NOTABLE:  Director has that disorder where he puts extremely on the nose music in every scene. Like a character will walk out the door and walk down the street and on the soundtrack a tune will start up with someone singing, “I walked out the door and walked down the street…”

BEST PART:  There’s a ton of Brian Wilson music on the soundtrack and THANK GOD because if it wasn’t for that I probably would have taken hostages.

BEST LINE:  Stanford Sucks! Yeah!

CROWNS:  1 out of 5