With Honors

If you listen hard enough, you can just hear the pitch: “Four college kids, at, um, at Yale…” / “Harvard.” / “Harvard, right. Anyway, four twentysomethings, self-involved, the best and the brightest, but, um…” / “Directionless?” / “Good! Directionless. Shallow. Too much studying, not enough Molson.” / “And?” / “Get this: their pointless, over-zealous lives are sent into an emotional tailspin when they encounter a lovable, eccentric wino who teaches them the meaning of life and love. I'm thinking maybe, uh, that guy from GoodFellas? / “Ray Liotta?!” / “Nah, think My Cousin Vinny: Joe Pesci.” / “Hah! Brilliant! Happy ending?” / “Sure, but not too happy. Think sleeper, think weeper, think feel good, learn-to-love lesson movie.” / “Love it. Babe, get me ICM, stat.” / “Hey.” / “What?” / “You gonna do that line?” // … Keshishian (Truth or Dare) pulls out the stops on this heartstring-yanker that makes its honorable points with all the subtlety of a Panzer Division. Brendan Fraser (apparently making a career out of Ivy League films) is Montgomery Kessler, the government major who reluctantly comes to realize that all men are brothers, even those who smell a bit rank. When he loses his senior thesis down a storm grate beside Harvard's famous Wilder Library, he comes into contact with Pesci's Simon Wilder, a Harvard bum who's been residing in the boiler room for the last seven years. When Simon's summarily evicted, Monty finds there's little else for him to do but offer the guy a spot at his off-campus digs, and therein lies the lesson. Monty's Harvard-reared ego is given a severe trouncing at the hands of this wise, nomadic gnome, and, in turn, Simon receives the love and respect he's been missing for so long. It's an old story, but a good one. The trouble is, With Honors wallows in the same tired plot contrivances that have long ago gone stale with the fetid stench of cliché. Someone is going to die at the end of this film, and if you don't know who by reel two, then you aren't much of a moviegoer. On top of this, Keshishian piles moving revelation atop moving revelation until you just want to cry out, “Enough already!” Perhaps in a future, better Hollywood, filmmakers will realize that you don't have to beat the audience over the head with an emotional ball-peen to make them misty-eyed: tears will come naturally, in the course of fine storytelling. Me, my head just hurts.