Newly single Mitch (Luke Wilson) rents a house near a college campus, where he and thirtysomething chums Frank “the Tank” (Will Ferrell) and Beanie (Vince Vaughn) rediscover the wild college lifestyle. But their high school nemesis “Cheese” (Jeremy Piven) has become dean of the school and seeks to get them ostracized, and their only option is to turn the place into an official frat house. Copious partying and nakedness occurs.

With OLD SCHOOL, the filmmakers were obviously trying to make a raunchy college comedy like ANIMAL HOUSE, but the broad humor is too sparse and familiar to approach anything quite as memorable as that frat classic. It’s also an attempt at a skewed meditation on male maturity and handling -- or shirking -- adult responsibility (with some REVENGE OF THE NERDS and a few bizarre and probably unintentional FIGHT CLUB parallels thrown in), all with mixed but occasionally topless results.

Director Todd Phillips clearly knows frat debauchery, but his blunt style often seems to mistake noise for raucous fun. It’s interesting to watch the cast before they had comfortably settled into their mostly higher-profile career paths -- Piven makes a good sniveling villain (along with former Daily Show/Late Late Show host Craig Kilborn as the repugnant boyfriend of GREY'S ANATOMY's Ellen Pompeo, Mitch’s object of affection), Wilson is typically (if anonymously) personable, and Vaughn had already firmly established his motormouth delivery. But the dodgy premise of arrested development only sporadically gives them any meaty character moments beyond the juvenile.

The humor is aggressively and relentlessly sophomoric (college pun intended), thanks mostly to Ferrell’s (now customary) shameless enthusiasm for embarrassing behavior. Worth a few chuckles, but too much of the movie is charmless, and overly reliant on protracted cracks at gross-out comedy. It all plays too much like exactly what it is: wish-fulfillment for men in their 20s and 30s (Elisha Cuthbert is rightfully on that wish list). Teens and college kids are too busy living what’s in the movie, or should at least be trying to.

Video: A satisfactory yet unremarkable 2.35:1 widescreen transfer captures all the flesh, but it’s hardly a showpiece for HD.

Audio:The Dolby Plus 5.1 audio is solid enough for a comedy but also delivers some punch in the rowdy music and crowd scenes.

Commentary: Ferrell, Wilson, Vaughn and director Todd Phillips gather for the full-length audio commentary, and it’s clear they had a great time together, since they're funnier than just about anything in the movie. Worth a listen, especially given they’ve mostly all had “breakthroughs” since it was recorded.

Old School Orientation (13 min.): A basic “making of” promotional featurette, with plenty of joking around (as one might expect from the assembled cast).

From the Cutting Room Floor (13 min.): As you’d guess, it’s a handful of deleted scenes, which actually includes a couple of funny moments.

Inside the Actors Studio (13 min.): A wickedly amusing sketch spoofing the show, with Ferrell accurately portraying host James Lipton and interviewing Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn and… Will Ferrell himself.

Outtakes and Bloopers (5 min.): A couple of chuckle-worthy bumbles and slip-ups.

Trailer and TV spots (4 min.): Present and accounted for.

Like the recent ANCHORMAN release, OLD SCHOOL’s picture seems to be the only element to receive any kind of real improvement for HD -- the disc recycles special features from the previous Standard DVD, but not remastered for HD. Even the cover is almost identical! Unless you have a particular soft spot for excessive beer-guzzling and K-Y jelly wrestling, it might not be worth the upgrade.