Glimpses of greatness in ‘Orange County’

Geoff Carter

Friday, Jan. 11, 2002 | 9:28 a.m.

A friend of mine once told the author William Kennedy to "get the (expletive) out of Albany." He thought he was doing his friend a favor in advising him to leave upstate New York, but Kennedy's output says otherwise: "Ironweed." "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game." "Legs." All these novels were bestsellers, all are respected, and all are set in Albany, N.Y., where William Kennedy still resides.

Oddly enough, this classic author's conflict is the base of "Orange County," a likeable teen film with a sly wit and a charm that sneaks up on you.

Colin Hanks -- son of Tom -- plays Sean, a surfer and well-rounded teen who aspires to go to Stanford, to become an author under the tutelage of his idol, Marcus Skinner (Kevin Kline). Sean sacrifices his beloved surfboard and risks alienating his girlfriend (Schuyler Fisk) and his family pursuing his dream, and when the wrong transcript is sent to Stanford and Sean is refused, he's just desperate enough to do a whole bunch of dumb things.

Actually, most of Sean's mistakes can be blamed on his family: his boozy mother (Catherine O'Hara, as funny as ever), his self-centered father (John Lithgow) and his brother Lance, a drug-addled doofus played by Jack Black. And perhaps "played" isn't the correct word; Black takes Mike White's script and beats it senseless against the curb, the way John Belushi assaulted "Animal House."

Black's Belushi-esque performance in "Orange County" is fiercely addictive; he even does a cartwheel or two to grab your attention. He puts "Orange County" back on course whenever director Jake Kasdan lets the movie go slack, which to his credit it rarely does. If for no other reason, you should see "Orange" for Black's neverending hilarious monologue, remitting only when he's not on camera.

The young Kasdan has his old man's gift for directing actors -- everyone in the film knows exactly what they're supposed to do, and they do it -- with very little wiggle room. Lily Tomlin, Chevy Chase and Ben Stiller have cameos that last under two minutes apiece, yet each of them fully register. Kline and Harold Ramis, both in roles they could have done in their sleep (Kline didn't even bother to shave), each mine gold from a small patch of land.

Much of this is due to White's script, which takes the cliches inherent to Southern California living completely in stride, instead focusing on the unexpected: the pathetic lives of Sean's parents, the genuine love of Sean's endlessly patient girlfriend and the ignorance of an educational system intent on moving students up and out with little regard for what they actually know or want to know. (Best example: the English teacher who attributes "Chocolat" and "Waterworld" to Shakespeare.)

Plus, Black gets to do pratfalls in his underwear. No actor is half as funny in his skivvies, except perhaps Richard Gere.

"Orange County" reminded me a great deal of another smart teen comedy: Phil Joanou's "Three O'Clock High." Even Francis Ford Coppola lauded that film in an interview once, bemoaning the fact that it was likely to be ignored because it was relased at the end of a cycle of teen films -- some good, some reprehensible. "Orange County" deserves better than to be thought of as Just Another Teen Movie, no matter where it was born and raised.