Old School

Old School is the film that made Will Ferrell a movie star. Todd Phillips' comedy about three thirty-something men who start a fraternity to recapture their youth is essentially Animal House for the early 2000s, and Ferrell's Frank 'The Tank' Riehle — a recently married man whose one beer at a party triggers a full-blown reversion to college behavior — is one of the great comedy characters of the decade.

The streaking scene. The tranquilizer dart to the neck during the debate. 'You're my boy, Blue!' Frank the Tank is chaos personified — a man who discovers that adulthood is a prison from which fraternity life offers temporary parole. Vince Vaughn's Beanie provides the manic energy, Luke Wilson's Mitch provides the straight-man center, and the three together form a comedic trinity that defined early-2000s bro comedy.

The film launched Todd Phillips' career trajectory that would eventually lead to The Hangover and Joker. It proved that the college comedy did not require college students — the funniest version of the genre is about adults who refuse to leave it behind. Old School's influence on the Frat Pack era — Ferrell, Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Stiller — is impossible to overstate. Every R-rated comedy of the mid-2000s owes it a debt.