Stealing Harvard (2003, DVD)

Stealing Harvard is the type of film that will draw in a lot of people by the quality of its trailer, but then once inside the movie, they will realize that all the best stuff was what they saw in the trailer. This is not necessarily the worst thing in the world, since the funny scenes featured in the trailer are genuinely funny, but it is to say that you're not going to be rolling with laughter for the entire duration of the film. The film has all of the right ingredients for a sleeper comedy hit - the established, well-liked young actor in Jason Lee, the off-kilter comedian de jour in Tom Green, and the X Factor, an important cameo by a popular TV personality in Will &Grace's Megan Mullally. With a cast as loaded as this, you can just scrap together some semblance of a plot, and the actors will just generate the laughs themselves, right? Ehhh, not so fast. While the lead actors do indeed save the day somewhat by turning in good performances, save for Green, it just isn t enough to overcome the huge encumbrance that the paper-thin plot turns out to be. There are some laughs to be found here, but they aren t enough to distract from the reality that most of this film is the actors trying to make something out of nothing.

We are first introduced to John (Lee). John is a normal working schlub with a slightly cracked girlfriend, Elaine (Leslie Mann), and a crappy job working for her father. While he doesn t exactly love selling home medical equipment all day, or having his father in-law to-be (Dennis Farina)breathing down his neck all day, it s a living, and it s not all that bad. He and Elaine have made a pact with each other that once they have saved $30,000, they would finally have enough money to get married and buy a house. Their dreams come to fruition one day, and everything seems to finally be falling into place. That is, until John decides to go visit his trailer trash sister. John s sister (Mullally) gives him some great news; his niece is finally going to college, and better yet, she s been accepted at Harvard. He is of course thrilled, because he always took his niece under his wing, since he harbored some feelings that his slutty sister wasn t the best mother in the world. But there is one more bombshell she is going to drop on him; his sister shows him a video from years ago in which John promises his niece that he will pay for her college education. His niece assures him that she is getting loans, so he is only responsible for a small chunk. Well, this is Harvard, after all, so that small chunk turns out to be $29,000.

John, of course, freaks out. While he feels that he must keep his word to his niece, Elaine has already started shopping for houses. When she goes behind his back to put a bid on a house, the $30,000 in savings is as good as gone. He now must come up with another $30,000, and he needs it yesterday. When no relative is willing to lend him the money, he must turn to an old friend, Duff (Green). Duff still lives with his mom, and runs a humble landscaping business, but John turns to him because he always seems to have a scheme up his sleeve. True to form, Duff has all sorts of great ideas for getting the money, but they re all illegal. This is where the hilarity should ensue, but it never really happens. There are some truly funny scenes, like Duff suspending a child from a wire with a chainsaw to try and prune a tree (unrelated to the main plot), or an overly affectionate dog that takes a liking to Duff s leg, or a botched liquor store robbery. However, I had trouble coming up with just these three scenes out of the entire movie that actually made me laugh. When a comedy is more development than laughs, something is wrong.

Lee does his usual everyman best as John, and he really does all he can to keep every scene afloat. You can really see him struggling to play the straight man in most scenes, while still trying to wring whatever laughs there are to be had out of any situation. It s just unfortunate that the scenes he s struggling so hard to save just aren t all that funny. Leslie Mann plays a good neurotic, slightly nutty girlfriend. She has a disturbing daddy complex, but unfortunately, I don t think that s very funny. While her scenes in which she cries during sex and spends a lot of time talking to her dad on the phone are meant to be hilarious, I just felt dirty. She does deliver a good performance, though. Megan Mullally does a great job with the role of the slutty sister, but there s just not enough of her. She seems to relish the role and really enjoys the part, and more of her probably would have helped the film. Green, on the other hand, needed a tighter leash. While he does somewhat stay in the framework of the crazy character of Duff, he has a little too much free reign to act like Tom Green. While cleverly disguised behind aviator glasses and a goatee, there are too many Green-isms that stand out to make it seem more like his show than a movie. There were plenty of scenes that actually were pretty funny, but got a little stale because Green tried to squeeze a few more laughs out of the gag with his constant repeating and manic gestures. I think Green will someday have to have Less is more tattooed on his forehead. Backwards, of course, so that he may see it when he looks in the mirror.

But it's not entirely Green's fault, either, because the material he is given to work with is noticeably flat. Let's face it - the entire premise of the movie is pretty ridiculous in itself, and it doesn't help that many desperate plot elements are way overused. For instance, there is a running gag in the film that involves a strange man who waits for people to break into his house so that he can dress them up like a woman and have them do bizarre things for him. This was oddly funny on the first go round, but the film trots out this device not once, not twice, but three times, as if it was just that funny. Which it wasn't. And of course, there's the disturbing sub plot of a father dating his daughter that is only toyed with and never fully explored (thank God). They even throw in yet another sub plot involving a crazy goon John knew in high school who now appears to have started his own little crime ring, but that as well is quickly shelved. The film is so scattershot in trying to hit on a formula that works, that it never fully exploits anything that may be funny, yet concentrates heavily on gags that never really worked from the beginning.

In the end, things don't even get resolved in any sort of meaningful way, leaving the rest of the film kind of moot. I won't give away the ending, but it's limp and ridiculous enough to make you just go "psssh" and wave you hand at the screen. The first 90% of the film tries so hard to put the main characters in interesting and impossible situations that to have it all come together in the last two minutes just seems like kind of a cop out. To me, that just suggests poor writing, as if the makers of the film suddenly realized that their movie didn't have an ending, and they hashed something out in twenty minutes. Along those same lines, they may have thought up most of the jokes in the movie during this same 20 minute huddle. What probably bothers me the most about this movie is that it really could have been good. A little tweaking here and there to improve the gags, and a little restraint put on Green may have just saved the day.

Stealing Harvard is a movie that did have the pedigree of a funny rental, but in the end, it squanders any chance it had of being a sleeper hit. Green is over-used, as well as several gags that never really pan out, and Lee is under-used, along with several scraps of plot that were never really fleshed out. The movie ends up being a crazy patchwork quilt of half-baked ideas that never really turn into anything funny. I sat through the entire film fully expecting to burst out laughing at any moment, but only found that I chuckled through a few scenes. I would only suggest this movie as a rental if your first choice is not available. There are some Tom Green fans out there who may want to pick it up to watch his antics, but I have to feel that even the most hardcore Green fan will have a hard time getting into this movie. Green is his usual self, but he's not given much to work with, and seems to just be spinning his manic wheels.