Critic Reviews
54
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
13(41%)
mixed
14(44%)
negative
5(16%)
Showing 32 Critic Reviews
88
The whole plot is a shambles. And yet none of this matters much when you're laughing as hard as this film makes you laugh.
80
Starts out silly, gets sillier by the minute, and frequently had me and most of the people around me in stitches.
80
In terms of sheer belly-laugh count, this one's in the same plentiful company as "There's Something About Mary" and "Road Trip."
80
It's blissfully, pants-wettingly funny from beginning to end.
80
Will Ferrell is a fearless comedian, and he commits completely to his insanity in the film, and that makes it work.
75
It's also a message movie, about as weighty as Lara Flynn Boyle and twice as absurd. But I'd like to report that I had an excellent time.
70
It’s party time, and the movie is wild and crude without being mean--it’s a comedy of infantile regression, “Animal House” for grownups. [17 March 2003, p. 154]
70
The disconnect between what men say and what they do makes Old School funnier than most of its gags and it also invests the movie with curious pathos.
70
Ferrell owns the screen.
70
The 1978 frat-house classic "Animal House," starring the late, great John Belushi, is the model for testosterone-mad comedies such as this, and while it hasn't that film's scope or finesse, Old School does have Ferrell, a man clearly in touch with his inner Belushi.
