There is no denying the amount of talent running through the veins of those involved with Orange County, especially the bloodlines of the actors (Tom Hanks’s son, Sissy Spacek’s daughter (Fisk)) and the director (Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence, of Big Chill fame.) Add into the mix, writer Mike White who gave us the chillingly dark arrested development drama Chuck and Buck last year, and there seemed to be little room for error, even forgiving the simplistic, typical teen movie premise that was being explored and exploited.  However something did go amiss.  Amidst brief flashes of a great idea and film, comes a deluge of stereotyped characters and situations, mixed in with the requisite gross-out scenes, and too much Jack Black in his underwear, and Orange County becomes, just another teen movie that wastes a decent idea, in favor of maintaining the status quo.

Hanks plays Sean Brumder, a talented teen mixed in with a family seemingly straight out of a dysfunctional family handbook.  His mother is a dependant lush, who doesn’t want to let go, his brother is a slacker who is “perpetually recovering from the night before” and his father is more interested in material possessions and finances, then his own family.  Growing up like this, who wouldn’t want to escape?  Sean’s escape attempt is inspired after the loss of a surfing friend.  He discovers a book on the beach, and after reading it, decides that his career goal is to be a writer, and his school of choice is the prestigious Stanford.  However something goes awry in his application process, as his transcripts are confused with another’s, and he doesn’t get in.  Believing he was wronged, and then finding out the truth, he sets out to do whatever he can to get into Stanford.  The premise and set up is decent so far, but what follows is a series of events, that range from silly (Black breaking into the dean’s office and messing around with another lonely, fire-obsessed student) to pointless (slipping drugs to the dean of admissions) to disgusting (an interview process which falls apart, expectedly after a sequence involving urine) None of these scenes even generate a modicum of laughter, more than maybe a smirk.  The potential for what could have been flashes through when Brumder, of course, encounters the author of the book (a surprise amongst other cameos) on a visit to the school.  It discusses how the characters in his life seem to come straight from a book, and how leaving one’s home, doesn’t always ensure success, due to the environment being inspiration for the pain and power of words.  Unfortunately, these ideas are drowned and beaten down, until the whole experience becomes tiring and completely unfunny and unoriginal.  I almost pitied the wonderful cast that was assembled here, for having to wade through this all.

As Brumder, Hanks shows similarities to his father’s earlier work, with the frustrated anxiety of trying to find a place in the world, and still have fun with things.  His chemistry with Fisk, is okay, but she is little more than window dressing, given very little to do.  Black is yet again wasted and miscast, as the buffoon, who only briefly shows that he is smarter than all of us, or at least thinks he is, roles that Black shines in (see High Fidelity).  Here, he is once again relegated not just to supporting character, in which he can steal movies, but he's too dumbed down, as he was in Saving Silverman, and not allowed to be what he truly can be.  Throw in a star studded list of cameos and stars (from Lithgow and O'Hara as the parents, to Chase as the principal, and the aforemetioned author) and it is stunning that Kasdan and company could have given a better presentation of things than he did.  After the quirky Holmesian mastery of Zero Efffect, I expected great, or at least decent and respectable.  Instead he too falls victim to the sophomore jinx that has bitten so many, and he barely seems to put forth an iota of creativity in doing so.

Ultimately, Orange County becomes another in the long line of cinematic carcasses that failed to capitalize on a genre and subculture begging to be visualized, satirized, or even explained in a justifiable and due manner.  It is not difficult to see where Kasdan and White (who, as an illiterate English teacher, also has the only other scene that I laughed at) wanted to go with this movie. This could have been a lighthearted teen comedy exploring what makes us who we are, and if our dreams are what we want to have, or simply an escape from who we really are.  Maybe not that psychologically in-depth, but somewhere in that general area would have been nice without being subjected to banal predictability that we are presented with here. Behind all of this talent and possibility, lay something that could have been light fun, while exposing teen angst and anxiety, while still managing to elicit some humor out of it all (see American Pie 1 and 2 for example) But Kasdan and White instead choose the easier path of conformity, and forsake a great cast for something that we can see in any other teen related movie, with less expectation based on bloodlines and previous efforts.  Granted, I wasn’t expecting Citizen Kane, or even Breakfast Club, but the glimpses of what could have been, make the end result a great disappointment ($ out of $$$$$)

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