Orange County Review
by Karina Montgomery (cinerina AT flash DOT net)January 16th, 2002
Orange County
Matinee Price
Make no mistake; Jack Black is in this film and he is funny, as always, but this film belongs to Colin Hanks. Yes, son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, which even if you had no idea who he was, is readily apparent. He looks so much like them, and evokes their humor and grace and presence so much, I was actually flush with gratitude that such cool people were good enough to pass their genes on. I had never felt such Darwinian satisfaction before.
I shuddered at the beginning when I saw the never-reliable MTV films logo, but I forgot that Black and Hanks were on the job. The crowd I saw this with was a crowd definitely more into High Fidelity and Tenacious D than Hanks/Wilson comedies, but everyone seemed to be having a good time. The proper number of laughs and "Oh NO!" yelps popped out from the youthful crowd. Jack Black was reveling in his horrible grossness and somehow keeping it just believable enough (most of the time) to not make it tiresome. It's a thin, thin line to tread.
Hanks goes to an insanely modern freakish coastal school and hangs out with total sand-brained surfers and even his teachers are stupid. I am told that Orange County is the "Not Quite LA" place, which I suppose every city or state hasŠthe place that is not quite the stuff, but assumes that it is the stuff merely by proximity to the actual stuff. I wondered how much local (i.e. SoCal) knowledge was needed to get the gag but I suppose we all have been somewhere that we imagine is pretty good, but not good enough.
The basic premise is that Hanks wants to get into Stanford with an obsessive fervor that, naturally, by the rules of comedy, drive him and his support network to do insane things at high stakes which ultimately brings him to a higher goal than that he ultimately aimed for. Hanks is sweet and funny and cute enough to be instantly trustworthy without being distractingly too hot and unrealistically modest. I adore him in this role and cannot wait for the next one. He gets a lot of emotional range and doesn't take all to the farcical level which must be difficult to resist in this, his first lead role, especially with a ham like Jack Black within 3 feet.
Predictably, some telegraphed jokes and simple snafus end up in disaster and/or humiliation, but just when the story could take an ugly downturn, in comes a great cameo from a very strong, experienced actor and the movie is buoyed up to reality again. Did I mention Hanks was great? Catherine O'Hara plays Black & Hanks' mom, and she's really coming out swinging on this one - she's a lovely foil to her ex-husband, played by John Lithgow in a surprisingly controlled (though still very big) performance. The cast is littered with great people and Hanks rides the wave through to the end. It's very satisfying, though it won't change your life. But hopefully it will change Colin Hanks' life towards more work!
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These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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