With Honors Reviews

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.)