Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #125: Orange County (2002).

Shaun Brumber (Colin Hanks) is a high school senior in Orange County, California. He lives with his boozy, divorced mum Cindy (Catherine O'Hara) and perpetually hungover slacker older brother Lance (Jack Black) and has a devoted girlfriend in Ashley (Schuyler Fisk); his dad (John Lithgow) has a much younger second wife (Leslie Mann) with whom he has an infant son. He is very bright but loves nothing more than surfing and partying, until his best mate Lonny (Bret Anderson) drowns at sea. This makes Shaun sit up and consider just where his life is headed, and so now he fully applies himself to acquiring an education. After reading a book by Marcus Skinner (Kevin Kline) that changes his whole perspective on life, he chooses to become a writer and applies to Stanford University, where Skinner is a literary professor. He's in with a shot until the school counsellor Charlotte Cobb (Lily Tomlin) mixes his academic transcript up with that of Shane Brainard (Fran Kranz). After then bungling an interview at home with two members of Stanford's enrolment committee, Shaun bites the bullet and drives across California, with Lance and Ashley in tow, to try to get his foot in the door.

2002's Orange County is such a wonderfully offbeat, grungy and relatable coming-of-age comedy with a very unique voice. Director Jake Kasdan takes a suitably relaxed but engaged approach to it, Mike White's (who even plays Shaun's English teacher and later wrote School of Rock, also starring Black) screenplay has solidly developed character dynamics and realistic-sounding dialogue for each character, and it has a very fitting and energetic alt-rock soundtrack. But the cast truly make this one as much as fun as it is: Colin Hanks (Tom's son) makes an amusingly desperate hero, Fisk (Sissy Spacek's daughter) makes Ashley into a very stoic sounding board, Black again gets away with just playing himself, and Lithgow and O'Hara are wickedly funny as this ex-couple who may just be able to reconnect. This is one Orange County that's loaded with Vitamin C.