Film Reviews

Stealing Harvard

• Director: Bruce McCulloch
• Starring: Chris Penn
• Details: US / 83 mins / (12PG).

It takes quite a number of people quite a while to make a motion picture. So, you'd be forgiven for thinking that somewhere along the line of the so-called creative process, someone with an ounce of intelligence and authority would have encountered the utterly brain dead screenplay of Stealing Harvard and consigned it to its rightful place of the bin. Sadly, intelligence doesn't seem to be at premium when it comes to Hollywood producers as this trite, profoundly unfunny film is already a serious contender for the worst picture of the year and it's only February.
Jason Lee plays John, an apparently reasonable chap who is busy building a life for himself with his slightly weird fiance. Having put away 30 large for his nuptials, everything in John's life seems to motoring along quite nicely. Yet things go a bit pear-shaped when John's niece wins a place at Harvard, and since he promised to pay the hefty tuition fees should she ever make something of herself, he's forced to think of imaginative ways of raising the readies. Enter the knucklehead who is Duff (Green), a landscape gardener with a 'talent' for bad ideas.
Since I left the cinema with an overwhelming desire to inflict intense bodily harm on everyone involved in the production of Stealing Harvard, it's a pretty safe bet to say that there are few redeeming features here. Even if the comedic infrastructure of the movie was intact (it is not, trust me on this please), the presence of Tom Green would make it unbearable in itself. A grossly unfunny man whose self-importance posturing is only equalled by his arrogant faith in his own abilities, Green deserves nothing beyond contempt.

Review by Garreth Murphy