Is Less Bad Still Good Enough?

In the 1957 drama The Three Faces of Eve, Joanne Woodward plays a woman with a split personality. By day, she is Eve White, an uptight housewife with a whisper of a voice, but sometimes, White is overtaken by Eve Black, a good-time gal in that mid-century American strain. "Honey, there are a lot of things you've never seen me do before," she purrs at the doctor. "That's no sign I don't do 'em." The central tension of the film is both psychoanalytic and sociological, as Eve faces the Goldilocks problem of whether she should be a porridge that is too hot or too cold. Luckily for Eve, she discovers a new persona, Jane, who combines the extremes of both—the kind of woman you marry or you hire to teach elocution. It was The Three Faces of Eve, and not any of the "Frat Pack" comedies of the 2000s, that sprang to mind as I revisited 2003's Old School, a movie I hadn't seen since for a good 20 years and which, in light of recent news, did not hold up. Old School revolves around Mitch (Luke Wilson), a man who comes home to see his live-in girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) hosting an orgy. He moves to a house by a college campus, where his two friends, married father Beanie (Vince Vaughn) and newlywed Frank (Will Ferrell), convince him to start a fraternity.

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