Stealing Harvard (2002)
Grade: C
Cast: Jason Lee, Tom Green, Leslie Mann, Dennis Farina, Megan Mullally, Tammy Blanchard, John C. McGinley
Director: Bruce McCulloch
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and drug references

Tom Green, one of the silver screen’s most hated personalities, is one of my favorite comedians. His films have not been as successful as his TV show because they lack what made his TV show great—the reaction of the people he was screwing with. Green would, say, hump a cow in public, and while the humping may or may not be funny, what earns the laugh is the way Green refuses to back down and is determined to get a reaction from those watching in horror. And the final layer of icing on the cake is when he makes people truly mad or offended. Thus is the hard-to-explain appeal of “The Tom Green Show”. I still have the tape “Tom Green’s Subway Monkey Hour” in which he screws with the Japanese, and I treasure it as much as anything else I own.

Sadly, Tom Green is not Hollywood’s latest $25 million man (go ahead and omit the ‘sadly’ at the beginning of the sentence). His latest, “Stealing Harvard”, will be lucky to make as much as his reviled “Freddy Got Fingered”, which was one of 2001’s biggest flops. Maybe “Stealing Harvard” deserves to flop too. And yet there is an effortless charm behind it, a charm that lands it ahead of the dull late-college antics of “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder”, but cannot quite propel it to the grandeur reached by the late-high school zaniness of “Orange County”. Jason Lee is in it, so that alone keeps me from flunking it. It also includes a performance from Leslie Mann (“Big Daddy”, “Orange County”), who is now the official queen of loony bitches.

Despite his top billing and the fact that he’s basically the only performer I’ve discussed in this review, Tom Green is not the star of “Stealing Harvard”. Well, not really. The story involves John Plummer (Jason Lee). He’s just raised $30,000 and as a result is about to get married to Elaine (Leslie Mann), the daughter of his caricature of a boss: the psychopathic Mr. Warner (Dennis Farina). Now he finds out that his sexually promiscuous sister (“Will & Grace”’s Megan Mullally) needs $29, 879 to pay for the education of her daughter (Tammy Blanchard), who is hoping to go to Harvard. And he can’t back out, because he promised years ago (on tape, conveniently enough) to pay for her tuition (one of the film’s many former titles was “You Promised”). Since he’s such a nice guy, he has to pay for it, but wants to marry Elaine too (she is, indeed, a loony bitch, as Green’s character points out to John, and the fact that the somewhat naïve John is so happy with such a loony bitch is one of the film’s quiet pleasures, intentional or not). So he turns to his best friend Duff (Green), and Duff suggests that they turn to a life of crime. You can’t blame John for listening; with a guy like Duff being your best friend, you must not be the biggest pumpkin in the intellectual patch, and his prospect probably doesn’t seem unreasonable. Hilarity, as could be predicted, ensues.

“Stealing Harvard” has appeal but it unwisely depends on how much you admire the cast. The script, unlike “Orange County”, is not a hilarious peppering of bizarre dialogue from quirky characters. It is not a complete loss, just a predictable piece of writing (tell me that the moment an old lady appears you aren’t expecting her to use the one allowed use of the f-word in a PG-13 comedy—if it were a drama, a couple other f-words could be thrown in because its intentions are serious—and tell me that the moment a dog appears you don’t expect it to hump Green, and tell me the moment the spooning gag becomes a big deal you don’t expect to see Green in a dress by the end of the film—don’t ask, you have to see it to know what I’m talking about).

However, its few charms did come through to me, because I like the cast. Jason Lee, not the best friend here, is a very good straight man; I hope he becomes a star, and not through crude and mediocre comedies like this. I still like Green, and he has some good bits here. I just wish I weren’t the only person in the world who liked him, because the $14 million gross of “Freddy” and this film’s $13 million gross to date aren’t signs of impending superstardom. Meanwhile, Mann, Blanchard, and Mullally are funny enough, and I don’t like Farina.

“Harvard”, despite its laughs, is never lifted to good movie status for many reasons, most of all its laziness. It never aspires to be much of anything, and thus is never much of anything. I laughed at some of Green’s stuff and Lee’s reactions, but then I went home and almost instantly forgot about the whole experience. They say you get what you pay for; “they” obviously saw “Stealing Harvard” at a matinee.


-Alex, October 2002