First off, let me point out that I saw this at a press screening, so I can't be sure I saw the final cut. What I did see, however, was maybe 10 to 15 minutes of good movie stuffed in an hour-and-a-half long film. "Orange County" isn't nearly as bad as the majority of teen movies out today, but that isn't a saying a lot - and that's about all there is to say for it.<br /><br />I can sum of the good aspects of this movie in two words: Jack Black. He's very good at what he does, a kind of goofball in his own world kind of character, and he excels at it here. He steals every scene he's in, and perhaps the best scene in the film is between Black and Ben Stiller, in an inexplicable cameo. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Black reminds me a bit of John Belushi - not quite the same, but with the same comic mentality. He just needs better vehicles than this.<br /><br />Colin Hanks isn't bad, but no one else really shines. I'm gonna go ahead and assume that the majority of bigger names in this film (Catherine O'Hara, John Lithgow, Lily Tomlin, Harold Ramis, and -say it ain't so- Kevin Kline) appear as a favor to Lawrence Kasdan, director Jake's father. They all seem out of place, especially Kline, and O'Hara's over the top caricature of a drunken gold-digger is too odd for words.<br /><br />The direction itself is not bad - the film moves along at a brisk pace, and avoids some of the normal pitfalls of the stupid teen comedy cookie-cutter. All the same, the story itself borders on the utterly ridiculous - it was pointed out to me that the end of the movie works out in such a way that the lead character(Hanks) actually manages to hurt his chances of achieving his dream, largely because certain elements of this movie apparently exist in fantasy-world, where the right choice is always the one accompanied by cheap sentimentality. This is a shame, because with a little work and a different ending, this actually could've turned out to be an interesting film.