I wanted to but couldn't!

Don't Believe the Hype

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

All I can say is that if you have any expectations for this oddball film then you may be disappointed. I thought that the performances by Grenier, Gellar, and Adams were very good and keep the mismatched story together. Every character seems to be rather offbeat and avoid all stereotypes. This is something I found refreshing, the director didn't try too hard to make the characters weird or quirky, but did just enough for you to be a little surprised and in some cases disturbed. Never thought FBI agents were such avid swingers or whatever those scenes are about. There is for sure some odd editing styles that don't really add to the movie in my opinion, but it doesn't hurt too much. Overall it is an enjoyable film and is worth it for the performances and unpredictability. Watch this if your bored and can't find anything to watch, don't have too many expectations. That's not an insult to anyone involved.

Chop Suey. A lot of chopped up, mixed up diverse morsels just adding up to a mess. The male lead is supposed to be a college basketball player. He is neither particularly tall nor very muscular. He looks about as athletic as a Kleenex tissue. Joey Lauren Adams has a GREAT voice-for playing a stripper or some such type, not a college professor-of philosophy of all things! Further, she is an item with male lead. I guess she is enchanted with his crooked behavior or his getting stoned out of his head with LSD. Maybe she thinks he looks like Kant. Then there is a gangster, henchmen, FBI agents, all running around for no particular purpose. There is cutting back and forth in time so there is no linear time line. This adds confusion to a film which is already terminally confusing. Sarah Michelle Geller is the one consistent character in the film. She plays it well because she has a part to play. She is a stereotype with no interesting lines, but her part is the closest this film comes to a real character. This was shot around Harvard in Cambridge Mass. I didn't see any scenes inside Harvard itself. Even Harvard could not have been stupid enough to cooperate with the making of this stinker.

I'd give it a zero if I could. Thank goodness I didn't rent this (saw it on TV). The bloatedly egotistical writer/director, who's way too in love with his Harvard degree, wasted a decent idea by creating one-dimensional characters and then casting with second-rate actors -- none of whom is a complex-enough/bright-enough person or skilled-enough actor to convince viewers that they're Harvard students or instructors -- who turned in one-dimensional performances. I can only imagine that he was jumping on the youth bandwagon and thus cast some of the names of the moment, but he would have done better had he gone with unknowns who are actually gifted. Utter waste of time; do not watch this.

Well, whoever gave this a high rating must also have been taking the home-made LSD that the main character took. I don't want to give the plot away because there may be people out there who wish to see this film - relatives of the actors for instance and ... nope that's about it. The main character twitches his way through this film but with no real evidence of why he is where he is - Harvard, with Sarah Michelle Geller as a girlfriend and lecturer as another. Just what they are supposed to see in him is a mystery to me since money, looks, intelligence and charm seems to be completely lacking.The plot line of needing money to help his parents seems so out of place for a self-centred student that is almost forgotten later in the film. Various characters seem to swing widely from one characteristic to another (watch out for the basketball playing friend moving from honourable wanting to do the best to gun-toting anger).At the end, not giving anything away but I really didn't care what happened to the main (or any other) character except to pray that no-one ever considered making a sequel. That's a couple of hours of my life wasted !