Harvard Man

The beginning of this movie is weak, and overly simplistic, especially the early scenes with the Cindy's father. The most amusing part is the fling in the forest, where Sarah Michelle Gellar's sexiness is notable. However, it gets better. You feel the guy's confusion in his head, his mindset, and the overall suspense picks up. The biggest disappointment is it ends abruptly. The plot could have been carried on even further, I believe.

This film has to be the most pretentious bunch of garbage I've ever seen. Neither Adrian Grenier, Joey Lauren Adams, nor Sarah Michelle Gellar turned in a performance worth a damn. I could've got better acting out of trees. Thank God I caught this on the tube, because I would have demanded a refund after viewing pretentious Ivy Leaguers spouting overly philosophical, pop-poetry crap for two hours. I can get loads of that garbage for free at a Starbucks near any major campus in America. I can't even say the film has technical merit. The acid trip scene was executed horribly (complete with crappy "acid trip" FX), and the dialog sounds like it was recorded in a shower. A disaster in every aspect.

I watched this movie with my two oldest daughters, who are both fans, as I am of the two main actors. It actually gave us plenty to talk about and has certainly opened their ideas to drugs and what happens when they are abused. I think and hope that they have been put off for life! Adrian, although relatively unknown in our country, is a star in the making and heres hoping there will be more of him to watch in the future. Sarah Michelle is a firm favourite among our family and is always at her best in seductive, bad girl roles. The storyline was certainly filled with twists and unexpected. This movie has just been released on video and dvd in our country, so it has been a long wait. But certainly worth it. I have already told other people to watch it, as I am a fanatic moviewatcher and whenever a movie comes along that really gets me thinking, I do go all out and tell other people to watch it.

The new form James Toback minted in his still-sharp-looking 2000 BLACK AND WHITE--a sort-of-Godardian essay movie heavy on cultural politics, flamboyant improvisation, and Toback's sexual obsessions--got kicked to the curb when JT finally made his long-in-the-works autobiographical bildungsroman, which originated with Warren Beatty, and later languished in the fields of Leonardo DiCaprio. Supposedly cast by Mary Vernieu, the movie is really cast by Toback's weiner: what else explains the surrealism of Joey Lauren Adams as a Harvard philosophy professor (at 28!) lecturing undergraduates on Wittgenstein's distrust in the expressivity of language? Or, for that matter, Rebecca Gayheart as a hard-as-nails (but, of course, secretly bisexual) FBI agent?

In BLACK AND WHITE, Toback's zany stunt casting (Brooke Shields as Nick Broomfield! Brett Ratner as a sleazy hack filmmaker!) worked, because the director let 'em roll, baby, roll. Here, Toback seems to have patterned his dialogue scenes after HIS GIRL FRIDAY--and the editing gooses the rhythms even further, so every scene plays like a MAD TV parody of crystal-meth freaks having a 78-rpm conversation.

Adrian Grenier plays the hero, Alan, a Harvard point guard, philosophy freak, and cocksman extraordinaire, who greets mob goons and Martin Heidegger alike with the same cool, adult, always-unexpectedly-detached repose. He shocks everyone in every situation with his infinitely wise underreaction to everything. Grenier suggests a moist pretty-boy naif in a Truffaut or Assayas movie; only late in the day, when he overdoses on LSD, does he seem to be acting at all. (That's not meant in a good way.) He divides his bed time between a mobster's daughter (Sarah Michelle Gellar, going for indie street cred just in case SCOOBY DOO didn't turn out) and the aforementioned girl-philosopher-queen (played by Adams as a kind of baby-voiced, bulbous-nosed Diane Sawyer). When Alan has to shave points in a Harvard-Dartmouth game to help his folks in Kansas rebuild their house after a tornado (why this movie allusion?), he gets in trouble with the mob and the Feds--and, this being a Toback movie, it's only a four-way with Eric Stoltz and three hot tamales that can get Alan out of hot water.

Like Toback's other dud, THE PICK-UP ARTIST, HARVARD MAN seems to have been thought-over to death. Toback massaged this material for many years; the LSD material and even the mob stuff dates the movie, marks it as Toback's bittersweet homage to his early-sixties youth. Set in the present no doubt for economic reasons, the picture makes no sense; but worse, Toback's heart isn't in it. This miserable cast doesn't give him the charge of the astonishing mix of great actors, "interesting" actors and stunning nonactors that made up BLACK AND WHITE. As another Toback gem, the non-fiction THE BIG BANG, proves, he needs a party full of bright minds to get things sparking. Without cast, Toback's Dostoevskian torments quickly turn into congealed Cinemax sleaze--and that will be the elephant graveyard where this blooper will no doubt lie.

Alan Jensen (Adrian Grenier) is the star basketball player at Harvard. They're not that good in a league nobody cares about other than gamblers. His girlfriend Cindy Bandolini (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is the daughter of a mob boss. He's also sleeping with his philosophy professor Chesney Cort (Joey Lauren Adams). Alan's parents lose their home in a tornado. Cindy offers him a way to make money fast by shaving points. Instead of her father, she borrows money from her father's associates Teddy Carter (Eric Stoltz) and Kelly Morgan (Rebecca Gayheart). Unbeknownst to her, they're actually FBI agents.

The visual style and dialog mannerisms overwhelm the plot. The classical music, quick paced speaking patterns, and camera work leaves this struggling to flow properly. It never has a chance to breathe. The actors are good for a more natural style but they're not great enough to pull this off. The movie is simply trying too hard.