Reviewing a movie like “Old School” is like voting in an Iraqi election — some movies are excellent, some movies are terrible and some movies just are.

Into the third category falls “Old School,” a movie that is almost pointless to review, since good reviews don’t matter to its target audience and bad ones just convince them that the reviewer is on the wrong side of the age of 20.

“Old School” really is pointless to review. While the picture is shown at movie theaters and printed on film, it never really adds up to a movie — rather a relatively meaningless series of scenes that may or may not have a common theme.

The good news to the people who want to hear it is that the scenes are occasionally funny, although in at least one case unnecessarily offensive, but usually innocuous to anyone who’s sat through “Road Trip” or its ilk.

The plot, which is to suggest erroneously that the movie really feels it requires one, is about Mitch Martin (Luke Wilson) returning home to discover that his girlfriend is involved in an orgy, and his friends Frank (Will Ferrell) and Bernard (Vince Vaughn) consoling him by throwing a party at his new house.

By some “plot” twist, the house is annexed by the university, and in order for Mitch to keep his house, he has to create a fraternity. The fraternity consists of a few students of varying races, creeds and obesity levels, and also an 89-year-old man who will, of course, die in a pool of jelly lubricant with two topless coeds who look to be about 30. The problem with “Old School,” even when approached on its own terms, is that it is simply too conventional.

Rather than have the characters behave like themselves, they end up admitting that maybe cheating on their wife isn’t the right thing to do. People like this would, in reality, not worry that the cheating was bad, but that cheating with four girls at once might be the problem.

As a whole, the scenes that give the film its plot are the worst, ranging from Luke Wilson’s attempt to craft a genuine relationship with his high school crush to scenes with Jeremy Piven playing way against type as a crusty university dean.

The supporting cast, particularly Craig Kilborn and Juliette Lewis, is absolutely dreadful, but the beauty of a film like “Old School” is that supporting characters are so unimportant and utterly interchangeable that their performances really don’t detract.

The other disappointment in “Old School,” besides some surprisingly prolonged nude scenes with Will Ferrell, is how the comedian is used so ineffectively throughout much of the film. Rather than being himself for most of the movie, Ferrell plays the sap that would normally be played by Ben Stiller. It isn’t until the last few scenes that his comedic skills are finally harnessed, bringing back memories of his best work on “Saturday Night Live.” Vince Vaughn, on the other hand, is in his standard form, and gives the film its biggest laughs.

While many critics have harped on “Old School” for trying to be “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” the criticisms are pointless and relatively groundless. To suggest that “Animal House” owns some bizarre film monopoly on the ideas of drunkenness and promiscuity only serves to point out that some things are always funny to people who enjoy drunkenness and promiscuity.

Frankly, I have always found “Animal House” dreadfully disappointing, but if only due to my low expectations, was actually impressed by “Old School.” The premise isn’t original or clever, but on its own level, it works.

There’s no question “Old School” is stupid (but if its viewers didn’t catch on to that already, they probably are too). But it’s a movie that doesn’t try to pretend.

Above all, the movie is funny when it stops trying so hard to be funny. If you’re one of those people who plans to see it anyway, odds are, you’ll enjoy it, and for a movie like this, that’s all that counts. In a year when Oscar nominees are nothing more than retreads — adaptations of Tolkien, a multi-tiered update of Virginia Woolf stories and another made-for-the-Academy Holocaust film — what can you expect from “Old School”?