How I Got Into College

Good light entertainment that never quite passed into the mainstream, despite featuring several performers who later became better-known: Anthony Edwards before he lost his hair and became a famous TV doc, Corey Parker before he became a caricature of himself, and Lara Flynn Boyle before she became a skeleton. A lightweight and quirky farce about the college admissions process, this bit of fluff also has a really nice heart, plus fun performances by Finn Carter as Edwards's true love and Chris Rydell as Parker's ultracool best friend.

Sweet character driven with silliness most of the way through! The jokes were well placed and everything else is genuinely pleasant; classic comedy before they got raunchy/dirty nowadays.

This movie starts off staggeringly well, and I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me for enjoying it so much. Well, after the first twenty minutes, I found that this movie was only average at best, with only the occasional chuckle and a great deal of silliness. Yet, I would still recommend this film, because the beginning is not only hilarious, but it was enough to get me caring about the main characters. The great opening was also important in that it changed my attitude regarding the film. I stopped looking for reasons to hate the movie, and I started looking for positives. Sure, everything progressed predictably, but you don't watch teen comedies expecting a cliffhanger ending. If you are someone who can appreciate brainless entertainment, then this is a good film for you to watch.

Corey Parker, who has a lot of screen charisma by the way, plays Marlon and he's in love with Jessica, played by Lara Flynn Boyle, when you could still see her if she stood sideways. Marlon is so in love that he's decided to go to the college of Jessica's choice, Ramsey College. Anthony Edwards is Kip, who recruits for Ramsey and admits to Marlon that he's heard of worse reasons for wanting to go to a specific college, so Marlon and his friend Oliver (played by Christopher Rydell, son of director Mark Rydell, and if he looks familiar, it may be because you remember him making the wisecrack 'I didn't know they had gas back then' to Henry Fonda in "On Golden Pond") go to Ramsey to check it out. Various other students attend, the most interesting of which is Vera, a feisty girl working at Mickey D's who has college aspirations but whose mother is wary of her daughter ending up disappointed.

Comedy is hit and miss. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes flat. Tons of cameos (Curtis Armstrong, Taylor Negron, Bob Eubanks (!) and Brian-Doyle Murray) are enjoyable. Coming in at a svelte 88 minutes, you've done a lot worse. 7/10.

There are a couple of great ideas in this movie. One is its ingenious approach to math problems. The other is a scene in which Jessica, while waiting for her college interview, is forced into the realization that she is considerably less unique than she thought.

The result is a movie with pockets of hilarity broken up by long stretches of vague amusement. This is, for the most part, a cookie-cutter teen comedy that often doesn't even seem to be trying. The premise and every vagary of the plot is stupid and poorly conceived, the lead actors, except for Boyle, give broad, forgettable performances, and one imagines the movie was written in an afternoon on a gum wrapper. It does have a few good moments, but it's not really worth bothering with.