These are the thoughts that occupy your head when watching Old School, a lukewarm comedy that is funny, but not nearly funny enough to recommend or really enjoy. With a plot barely held together by the likability of its cast, it does ok for a February comedy, but, honestly, these people are capable of better. Luke, the blander of the Wilson Brothers, plays Mitch, who returns from a business trip to find his girlfriend watching porn and, even worse, about to engage in a big orgy. The only truly funny line in the film comes in this scene, from a latecomer asking Mitch, “I’m here for the gang bang?”

Luke moves out with his dog Orson (wishful thinking on the part of the director there wouldn’t you say?) and into a house near Hamilton College. His buddies Beanie (Vince Vaughn) and Frank (Ferrell) throw Mitch a freedom party, and the ambitious Beanie then starts a fraternity in Wilson’s house to keep it out of the hands of the Dean (played by Jeremy Piven, who went from college slacker in PCU to Dean in less than a decade). Frank’s drunken ways get him in trouble with his newlywed wife, but Beanie’s wife, played in a few seconds of screen time by Leah Remini, doesn’t seem upset that she never sees her husband as he galavants around town with 19 year old coeds. Mitch’s love interest is former high school crush Nicole, played by Ellen Pompeo, who is such a dead-ringer for Renee Zellwegger that she could fill in for the Chicago star if she is unable to fulfill her duties as an Oscar nominee.

Some of Ferrell’s antics - like destroying a child’s birthday party while on animal tranquilizer - are actually very funny, but they have little to do with the plot, which never really seem to amount to much of anything. The motley crew frat brothers don’t have many opportunities to standout and the dean versus the frat finale is suspenseless and boring. Why have old dudes make a frat if you’re not really going to play up the fact that they are old farts are trying to be cool? There are a dozen ways they could have played this potential for laughs and even a couple that could have led to some social commentary about aging losers. I wish I could say it doesn’t have time for smart stuff with all the comedy, but really it’s the product placement and weird cameos (Andy Dick and, get this, James Carville) that are crowding all the screen time. The script, by director Todd Phillips and collaborator Scot Armstrong, is too lazy to fully resolve the love triangle between Mitch, Nicole, and her boyfriend, played by Craig Kilborn of all people. When Nicole pops up in the last scene to say she forgives Mitch for being a jerk, we learn that she has, off-screen, broken up with the boyfriend she picked over Mitch. We don’t even get to learn why she broke up with him.