Lately, it seems that MTV-generation movies have had plot lines repeated again and again. "She's All That" and "Never Been Kissed" have the same popular boy-falls-in-love-with-shy-girl plot. And those repetitive "horror movies" are getting tiring: "Scream", "I Know What You Did Last Summer", and their respective sequels. In fact, these plots have been repeated so many times, spoofs of them have been released, like "Scary Movie" and "Not Another Teen Movie".

"Orange County", starring Colin Hanks (Tom Hanks's son) and Jack Black, isn't just another teen movie - and to think, it's co-produced by MTV Films. It's actually an enjoyable teen movie. Hanks plays Shaun Brumder, a frustrated 17-year-old aspiring writer. He lives with his over-emotional mother (Catherine O' Hara); his elderly, disabled stepfather; his stoned older brother (Black); and the family's Hispanic maid. Shaun's dream of attending Stanford University to learn from the professor-writer he admires, Marcus Skinner (Kevin Kline), is squashed when his application is rejected. It turns out that his ignorant college counselor (Lily Tomlin) sent Stanford the wrong transcript; Shaun received a near-perfect score on the SAT, but the other transcript stated that he barely made a 1000.

Surprisingly, Shaun wasn't always the academically-focused student that he is now. As he explains early in the movie, Shaun was a frequent surfer. After the death of a close friend, Shaun finds and reads "Straight Jacket", by Skinner. Through 52 readings of this book within one month (!), Shaun gains a new perspective on life: he trades in surfing for an education. Shaun writes a short story of his life in the SoCal area, entitled "Orange County", and submits it to Mr. Skinner. Then, as stated earlier, Shaun doesn't get into Stanford, and subsequent attempts to enter fail, thanks to sheer bad luck.

Speaking of "bad," there were quite a few "bad" instances in the movie that should be noted, such as the frequent drug and sex-related situations. I was surprised, though, that there wasn't as much tobacco use as I had expected. In fact, smoking appeared in only three scenes. In the first scene, Lance lights up a cigarette when he drives Shaun and his girlfriend, Ashley (Schuyler Fisk), to Stanford. It isn't as if Lance is a glamorous person that everyone wants to be like; he is the total opposite, an unattractive, bummy drug-user, therefore accurately portraying the effects of tobacco (and drug) use. The second smoking scene is responsible for setting the Stanford Admissions Building on fire: Lance takes his cigarette lighter and purposely sets a list of accepted applicants on fire and throws it in a trash can. This is another accurate situation connected to smoking; according to cleanlungs.com, smoking causes nearly 25% of all fires in the U.S.

I was let down by the third smoking scene. Shaun finally meets his idol, Mr. Skinner. As the two of them converse, Mr. Skinner is caught smoking - a negative influence on an aspiring young writer! He is making it seem that successful writers smoke to make them look cool. In reality, he's cutting his writing career short, since tobacco use causes a myriad of diseases and cancers.