Ross Bonaime, Staff Writer
Last weekend, Vince Vaughn’s Couple’s Retreat opened with a surprising $34 million dollars, proving that the films of The Frat Pack—movies featuring Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jack Black, Steve Carell and Will Ferrell—still have a chance against films from Judd Apatow’s crew.
In honor of this box office victory, here are the top 10 films from The Frat Pack:
10. Zoolander
The world’s two top models face off against the evil creator of the piano tie in Ben Stiller’s Spinal Tap of the fashion industry.
Stiller and Owen Wilson are ridiculously dumb as the two models and Ferrell as the villain is one of the most over-the-top antagonists in recent memory.
9. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
The first and best of Ferrell’s sports parodies, Ricky Bobby was the epitome of a racer stereotype.
His father told him “if you’re not first, you’re last,” so when he does lose a race to Jean Girard, played by Sasha Baron Cohen with arguably the worst French accent ever, Bobby starts to go a little nuts. And if anyone knows how to go crazy, it’s Ferrell.
8. Step Brothers
Speaking of Ferrell being crazy, imagine if he was a 40-year-old still living at home with his mom when she gets married and the stepfather’s 40-year old son, perfectly played by John C. Reilly, moves in.
After hating each other and trying to bury one another, the two bond over their favorite types of dinosaurs, using night vision goggles and their guy-crushes on John Stamos to create one of last year’s weirdest and funniest films.
7. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Vince Vaughn and his crew of misfits try to save their gym by entering a dodgeball tournament against a rival gym, led by Ben Stiller.
Dodgeball was an insane success, even beating Spielberg’s The Terminal in its first weekend. With its supporting characters including Justin Long and Alan Tudyk, it’s not hard to see why it was so loved.
6. Meet the Parents
Stiller was at his neurotic best with this 2000 comedy hit where he faced his fiance’s father, Robert De Niro.
Nothing goes right as Stiller is given a polygraph test, breaks an urn filled with a loved one’s ashes and ruins everything he touches.
But the film has as many sweet touches as it does laugh-out-loud moments. Let’s just forget about that terrible sequel, though.
5. Wedding Crashers
Vaughn and Owen Wilson play two friends who have a great time at weddings they aren’t invited to but get in dangerous territory when they start falling for two girls they meet at one of the weddings.
Like Meet the Parents, everything goes wrong for Vaughn’s character, and the believability level might be pretty low, but hilarious moments, including a great cameo by Ferrell, make this a pretty great comedy.
4.The 40-Year-Old Virgin
This is the film that put Steve Carell and Apatow on the map. Carell’s character Andy is the perfect lovable loser, and his friends, played by Romany Malco, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen, are misdirected but have their hearts in the right place.
As Andy tries to find love and his friends try to find him lust, Carell became one of the most likable entertainment personalities in the comedy world.
3.The Royal Tenenbaums
What could be called the dramatic Frat Pack movie is a beautiful film from director Wes Anderson and written by Owen Wilson. The film stars Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow as the children of an uncaring dad, played by Gene Hackman.
But the beauty of the film is how out of this confusion, they create their own mixed-up family. Wilson and Stiller take on some of their most dramatic work, including Wilson, whose attempted suicide scene is one of the greatest scenes Anderson has ever directed.
2. Old School
Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell and Luke Wilson relive their college days by creating their own fraternity in this gigantic hit.
Old School made Vaughn a comedic giant for the first time since Swingers and brought Ferrell into the pantheon of Saturday Night Live alumni who were actually successful.
1. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Anchorman was the film where truly the entire Frat Pack shine. With the exception of Owen Wilson, all of the members make appearances and feature easily some of their best comedic moments.
The film has become a monster of its own, becoming one of the most quoted films of the decade, and for good reason. It’s hard to not still laugh at the ridiculousness of Ferrell, or the stupidity of Carell’s Brick Tamland.
But the fight sequence between the news anchors in the pinnacle of the film and allows The Frat Pack to be as ridiculous as they want to be. And it’s pretty ridiculous.
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