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OTHER REVIEWS: Gossip Mickey
Blue Eyes O Requiem
for a Dream |
Harvard Man  BY: DAVID PERRY For a few decades, critics have been accusing James Toback of seemingly running out of ideas -- for many people, his sex-driven, angst-laden, existential diatribes are beginning to all look alike with no real point amid all their sex, drugs, and breakdowns. In my opinion, Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White, his previous two films, were misunderstood: their matter-of-fact statements on issues that Toback probably has no idea about had an odd intimate grandeur to them, voyeuristic exercises that not only titillated but also provoked. But for Harvard Man, I must throw in the towel. After a few years of defending Toback, it seems that he has finally decided that if critics are going to accuse him of making a certain kind of bad movie, he might as well make them. Harvard Man certainly tries to deal with something tangible, but Toback appears to feel cornered into a flurry of stylistic nightmares that kill the movie's possible chance for enlightenment. Though the screenplay is reported to be six years old it seems more likely that Toback, a Harvard alum, must have been hard pressed for a new script after watching an episode of The Sopranos (probably the Emmy-winning "College"), spending an evening churning out a script that seems to bring together bits of his life, some mob clichés, and the basketball player plot from Black and White. Probably in a gesture to his own college days, the script was crafted in an evening of caffeine and cigarette haze, a work ethic that can produce results to turn in directly before the deadline but lacking the personal care of an essay constantly drafted over a couple days. The director has tried to project himself into Alan Jensen (Grenier), an intellectual young basketball star on the Crimson squad who spends his days jumping between rigorous sex with his girlfriend Cindy Bandolini (Gellar) and post coital philosophical discussions with his professor Chesney Cort (Adams). When his parents lose their home in a Kansas tornado, Alan decides that his only choice for $100,000 to build a new house is to turn to Cindy's dad, New England mafia boss Andrew Bandolini (Russo). Soon misunderstandings accumulate around corrupt double-doings -- before long the movie turns into Toback's strained attempt to make Gossip seem like serious cinema. A cavalcade of additional characters arrive, capped by a pair of threesome loving FBI agents (Stoltz and Gayheart) who have gotten into the good graces of the Bandolini family only to find an unknowing Alan fall right into their tangled web of evidence to bring the mafioso down. Alan might be better equipped to defend himself had he not downed three LSD-laced sugar cubes and now sees everyone with heads made out of Silly Putty (including Al Franken in an awfully contrived cameo). As Toback tries to convince the audience that he has some pulse on the style of Jean-Luc Godard with languorous shots and jagged editing, the few charms of the movie lose all their appeal. He crafts the movie with enough devotion to the material to make it seem like there's more to the movie than the shallowness that he left bleeding throughout his script. Grenier, who seems to still be struggling with puberty at 26, feels misplaced as a cocky academic while costar Gellar just struggles to read her lines without resorting to some Valley Girl colloquialisms. Though miscast, Adams nonetheless gives a nice portrayal as the most vulnerable character in the bunch; the way the actresses high-pitched voice seems out of place when waxing over Kierkegaard is equal to the perfect motherly way she tries to speak to Alan outside of the class (the film misses a few errors, having a teacher-student relationship openly engaged in Harvard Yard; though what do you expect from a film where a father character calls his son by the wrong name). These conversations have the same maternal quality that made her Alyssa character from Chasing Amy so perfect in dealing with the juvenile actions of Ben Affleck's Holden. Even as the rest of the ship is sinking through Toback's absurdities, Adams remains a constant joy with her down-to-earth performance. However, Toback never really comes up with anything for
Adams' Chesney to do other than balance the rest of the film with her wisdom. Regardless
of a fine performance and the occasional moment of inventiveness, nothing within the
screenplay can save Harvard Man from an oblivion of pseudo-New Wave
pretentiousness. It's easy to see that Toback is pushing toward something that could be
interesting, but while hulking over his final, he evidently fell asleep in the library. |
