Rushmore

Rushmore

source: Rushmore

What the heck is this? That was what I thought when the credits of the movie started rolling in. This movie is god awful. It is so bland, unentertaining, boring and NOT funny at all. It started off with some potential, but dropped off and crashed and burned to a quick demise! Avoid this tripe at all costs!

If you like plot, characters that make any sense at all and humor, this movie is not for you. The humor is not funny. The characters are boring (case in point: Bill Murray. Bill Murray doesn't act. He just looks frumpy and recites lines), or they are confusing: What's up with the protagonist? Is he a nerd? A social butterfly? A sociopath? A brat? I can't figure it out, and I don't care to, because my interest is not being maintained. Everything about this movie sucks. The plot is non-existent. It just goes from one damn thing to another. The only thing consistent about the movie is the feeling of confusing turmoil that wells up inside of you, and the question "when is this crappy plot going to start?"

A student at a private school falls in love with one of the teachers. Although billed as a comedy, there is hardly anything here that's worth a chuckle. Max, the main character, is meant to be endearing, but is such a self-centered jerk that it's hard to care what happens to him. In fact, very little happens. This film is basically a series of uninteresting episodes strung together without rhyme or reason. Too much screen time is devoted to Max's lame plays. Anderson seems to be going for "quirky" here but ends up with "boring." The love triangle between the 15-year-old Max, the 30-year-old Williams, and the 50-year-old Murray is too creepy.

It started off as a film about a professional student, detoured into an anarchic comedy, and never resolved a single issue. I couldn't tell if Bill Murray's character's wife was cheating on him, whether he was cheating on her, and why the English teacher did anything at all. And I would have slugged Max in the nose on a regular basis. This film did not realize its potential and wandered all over the place. In the end I didn't care about any of the characters and can't even remember how it ends.

I wasn't crap. It was fairly good. But it wasn't anything special. Nothing that funny. Characters are interesting at times and annoying at others. Script is pretty good at moments and very flat at others. As for all you "oh, it was so fresh, just like my deodarant" originality people out there, HEY it WASN'T original!!! Murray and Schwartzman were quite good but not great, so the Oscar cry was rather overdone (as much of a Murray fan that I am). Quite frankly I have no idea what people think is so great here...

I watched this after "The Royal Tenenbaums". I thought that film was a pile of cutely self conscious rubbish. Star packed, in fact there were more of them than there were laughs. Trying to be fair I gave Wes Anderson a second chance and watched "Rushmore". Lo and behold it was self-consciously cute rubbish. The only thing that made it slightly more watchable was the absence of Gwyneth Paltrow. Jason Schwartzman is annoying as I'm sure the intention was. Bill Murray does his standing still and pulling a face routine. The script is adolescent. Although the film is about an adolescent from supposedly adult filmmakers one would expect an adult viewpoint. Some have compared "Juno" to this and I can see where this view originates from: "Juno" at least beneath it's over-cutesy-cool surface had something resembling a heart. If you like comedy without laughs, drama without drama and have failed to develop emotionally I wholeheartedly recommend this film.

I agree with some of you that stated this movie was over-hyped. It was a bit of a let down, but it had its good points. The soundtrack, including the Who and the Stones was great and fit the movie perfectly. Bill Murray was great in the small doses he was in the movie. The other actors did well also. Definitely different and irreverant!

Bottom line: subtle, unique, *brilliant*. "Subtle" means that a lot of people won't get it. They'll critique its off-beat comedic timing. They'll whine about its pace or how it doesn't really come to a climax, or praise Bill Murray's other comedic efforts in films like Caddyshack. This is not their movie.