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ORANGE COUNTY

Rife with Hollywood pedigree (it’s directed by Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence, the man behind The Big Chill and stars Colin Hanks, son of two-time Oscar winner Tom), this plucky MTV comedy taps into the teen angst surrounding college admittance. Young Hanks’s Shaun Brumder is a wide-eyed idealist marooned in the coddled title county. He’s a top student, the class president, and an accomplished surfer with a driving ambition to get into Stanford so he can write the Great American Novel. Not an impossible task for someone with Shaun’s credentials, but then the school’s goofy guidance counselor (Lily Tomlin) mixes up his board scores with those of the class stoner. Needless to say, Shaun gets rejected; his response is to saddle a beat-up Bronco with his girlfriend (the effervescent Schuyler Fisk) and slothful brother (Jack Black doing a decent John Belushi) and road-trip off to the esteemed halls of academe to set the record straight. Hanks is amicable enough in the lead, but it’s the screwball antics of the fringe players — Catherine O’Hara and John Lithgow as dysfunctional parents and Black — that get Orange County a passing grade.

BY TOM MEEK

Issue Date: January 10 - 17, 2002
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