Average Rating: 4.6/10
Reviews Counted: 36
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 24
Harvard Man is a pretentious, incoherent mess.
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 8
Harvard Man is a pretentious, incoherent mess.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.6/5
User Ratings: 7,704
Director and screenwriter James Toback used his own experiences as a college student in the 1960s as the basis for this drama about a present-day student athlete who's bitten off more than he can chew. Alan Jensen (Adrian Grenier) is a college sophomore struggling to keep up with an unusually busy schedule -- while studying philosophy as a Harvard undergrad, he's also a point guard on the school's basketball team, and is juggling two girlfriends, cheerleader Cindy Bandolini (Sarah Michelle
Oct 29, 2002 Wide
Nov 5, 2002
Cowboy Pictures
All Critics (42) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (24) | DVD (8)
The attempt is courageous, even if the result is wildly uneven.
What makes the movie work is that the premise, which sounds like a comedy, is treated with the seriousness of life and death.
Toback offers a complex, borderline campy, and oddly entertaining study of modern moral dilemmas.
A crisply made movie that is no more than mildly amusing.
A characteristically engorged and sloppy coming-of-age movie.
Putting it all out there and shaping it into some kind of contained whole is something else again. Although that never quite happens here, there's plenty to appreciate.
An overstylized, pur�ed m�lange of sex, psychology, drugs and philosophy. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes indulgent -- but never less than pure wankery.
Grenier is terrific, bringing an unforced, rapid-fire delivery to Toback's Heidegger- and Nietzsche-referencing dialogue.
I think it was Plato who said, 'I think, therefore I know better than to rush to the theatre for this one.'
A semi-autobiographical film that's so sloppily written and cast that you cannot believe anyone more central to the creation of Bugsy than the caterer had anything to do with it.
Might have been played as a glum cautionary tale, but in Toback's hands it becomes a lark--flashy, florid and blissfully over-the-top.
There's a certain niche audience that will eat up Harvard Man -- but whether that's the mob-movie set, the college-movie set, or the sex-movie set, I really have no idea.
A frustrating 'tweener' -- too slick, contrived and exploitative for the art houses and too cynical, small and decadent for the malls.
If it's seldom boring, well, it's also rarely coherent.
For those who accept the offbeat premise, the film ultimately delivers a satisfying dramatic exploration of the ways we create ourselves.
Not all that good. I liked the actors but the characters were not likable and I ended up not caring what happened more and more as I watched it.
January 7, 2008
Super Reviewer
SMG fans will be dissapointed with this. A very odd film each which a student gets mixed up in trying to throw a basketball game in which to make money for himself and his mobster daughter, girlfriend.
June 10, 2007Super Reviewer
| 25% | Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Par... |
| 81% | Kung Fu Panda 2 |
| 83% | Rise of the Planet of the Apes |
| 94% | Moneyball |
| 59% | Real Steel |
| 50% | The Rum Diary |
| 92% | Take Shelter |
| 31% | The Human Centipede II (Full Seq... |
| 72% | Tiny Furniture |
| 95% | Elite Squad: The Enemy Within |
The Rum Diary, Take Shelter
What are his 10 best movies ever?
See the all-new action-packed trailer!
The Vow leads record-breaking...
4
8
2
3
7
2
4
Top Critic