" I'm a bum.
But....I'm a Harvard Bum "
1994 - 101 minutes
The University of Life.
The School of Hard Knocks. Simon
Wilder (Academy Award winner Joe Pesci) is an alumnus of each.
He hasn’t got an Ivy League degree.
Yet when it comes to life’s important lessons, feisty Simon is in a
league by himself in the funny and touching With Honors.
“I’m a bum. But…I’m
a Harvard bun,” says Simon, who lives by his sits on Harvard’s campus.
It’s there that he meets senior Monty Kessler (Brendan Fraser).
Monty would have nothing to do with the homeless man if not for one
thing: Simon has the only copy of
Monty’s senior thesis! He’ll
give it back for food, a place to stay and more:
one page – for one favor – at a time.
A new life is beginning for Monty and his roomies (Moira Kelly, Patrick
Dempsey, Josh Hamiliton). They’re
about the learn that if you want a degree, go to Harvard.
But if you want an education, see Simon Wilder.
A
modern fairy tale about the things that really matter in life, WITH HONORS is
sleek and soulless, even though it affects to wear its heart on its sleeve.
Monty Kessler
(Brendan Fraser) is a bright, disciplined Harvard scholarship student,
determined to prove himself in the eyes of conservative Professor Philip Hayes
Pitkannan (Gore Vidal), for whom he's writing his senior thesis. Kessler shares
a house with three roommates. Everett (Patrick Dempsey) is a studied eccentric:
he dresses like an Edwardian dandy on drugs, keeps a pet rooster, and is
secretly terrified of graduating and leaving the campus cocoon. Pretty,
ambitious Courtney (Moira Kelly) shuns romance in favor of a boy-toy lover she
calls "The Face" and is secretly in love with Monty. Jeff (Josh
Hamilton) is the odd man out, the grind who's working twice as hard as the
glittering intellects around him; he wants to go to medical school and is
worried he won't make the grade.
Monty's senior
year takes an unexpected turn when a power outage sends him into a thesis panic.
His computer has just crashed; what would he do if something happened to the
only hard copy? Monty sets out in the snow to a nearby copy shop, only to take a
nasty fall and see the precious envelope go flying through a grate. He sneaks
into the basement of Widener Library and finds his manuscript in the dirty hands
of Simon Wilder (Joe Pesci), a homeless man who's moved into a corner of the
cellar and is feeding sheets of Monty's masterwork into the flames for warmth.
Monty makes a deal, allowing Simon to move into the abandoned van in his yard if
Simon will give back the manuscript.
The roommates are
dubious, but Monty prevails, and slowly develops a relationship with Simon. To
his surprise, Simon isn't a drunk or a drug addict; he's a dropout, but not the
worthless bum he appears to be. Smart and well-read, Simon even stands up to
Professor Pitkannan's intellectual bullying and comes out ahead. Monty sneaks
Simon into the attic, then wins over Everett and Courtney; the three of them
bully Jeff into accepting Simon as their fifth roommate. Monty tries to get
Simon onto public assistance after learning that Simon suffers from a lung
disease he developed after working with asbestos while in the Navy. But stubborn
Simon won't go along with Monty's plans to integrate him back into society; as
Simon grows sicker, Monty, Courtney, and Everett dedicate themselves instead to
locating his estranged son. They arrange a reunion, and when Monty must choose
between driving Simon to his son's home and turning in his revised thesis to
Pitkannan on time, he forfeits the opportunity to graduate with honors. Simon
dies soon after.
Shot largely on
the campus of Harvard University, from which director Alek Keshishian (TRUTH OR
DARE) graduated, WITH HONORS tries to be a good, old-fashioned Hollywood movie,
dedicated to the proposition that all the book-learning in the world is nothing
compared to the wisdom a common man can impart to a sheltered college boy. The
surface is all very modern--the college boys include a college girl, the common
man is a "homeless person" rather than a tramp--but the movie's heart
is rooted firmly in the 1930s. To dwell on the movie's implicit
anti-intellectualism and sentimental view of society's outcasts is probably an
overreaction to its shallow moralizing, but it's tempting nonetheless.
One
can't really argue with the messages: that it's important to care for others,
that we shouldn't judge books by their covers, that bad things happen to good
people. But the delivery is so homogenized and sentimental that it makes
everything too easy to take seriously. Simon is an adorable homeless man,
displaying none of the unpleasant qualities that often result from life on the
streets. And Monty, Courtney, and Everett are the most sensitive shallow college
kids of all time: whether they'll come around to helping out Simon is never
really at issue; it's only a question of how many false obstacles to the
realization of their better natures will be thrown in their paths by the
screenwriter. Well acted and beautifully photographed by Sven Nykvist, WITH
HONORS comes in a package that is altogether too attractive for the watered-down
contents. It's a fast-food movie: it looks great and goes down easily, but
leaves a sour, nasty aftertaste. (Sexual situations,
profanity.)
