Glory Daze

Glory Daze is both unexpectedly funny, at times heartwarming and the sheen of nostalgia covers up a lot of stuff you might otherwise get picky about.

Clearly they've studied both movies and can mimic the moves, but they just don't hear the music.

Yet if the pilot is generic and wan, it is at least sweet-tempered and not completely offensive (though this is somewhat at odds with its cinematic heritage).

If Harris, who's clearly meant to steal every scene he's in, seems a little too cool to be hanging out with the brothers from Omega Sigma, whose deficiencies haven't yet been fully cataloged, it's still not nearly as cool as he's going to need to be if he's to lead this slightly tired toga party right into "Conan's" waiting arms.

The resulting frat humor fluctuates between ill-conceived gags (someone gets tasered in the scrotum) and some juicy zingers, while the ragtag supporting cast (including Tim Meadows as a paranoid history professor) has potential. Ultimately, though, it's impossible to shake the feeling that we've seen, if not exactly lived, this all before.

I would say Glory Daze is an homage to "National Lampoon's Animal House," except that it's more an inept imitation that borders on insulting.

It's an average piece of work, crammed with every frat-boy cliche you can imagine, and cast with actors who don't initially stand out.

Glory Daze is a frathouse-of-mirth comedy and so generic in its particulars that it is barely even necessary to describe its characters and their situation.

It's be one thing if the show employed thinly drawn, cliched characters in service of solid comedy, but very little of Glory Daze is actually funny.

The problem is that Glory Daze itself never stakes a claim to its own identity. It's tonally all over the map--and that inconsistency gets in the way of the few potential laughs.

While the fixings are here for genuine humor, Glory Daze repeatedly settles for quick-and-dirty. That's frustrating, even though it's understandable to some extent, because the audience for that style of comedy clearly exists.

The first episode offers little to recommend. However, if the show can keep up with the boys as they undergo their own awakenings, then it might eventually offer something fresh to the campus comedy canon. If not, the series will become a comedy of last resort.

Nothing in the premiere episode ever gets as creative as that bit of casting.

It's not funny enough, the characters don't make much of an impression and the "Porky's"-style humor is too tame to have the requisite impact.

The appealing cast valiantly tries to hack its way through the dense underbrush of jokes about frats and testicles and cannabis. But the harder they hack, the hackier it all becomes. Before long, the jungle has won. The show, and viewer, have lost.

While the actors in Glory Days are attractive and not without talent, they're ill served by the hackneyed writing and desperate plot. These boys have only one thing on their minds and it isn't matriculation.