BEFORE: Lily Tomlin carries over again from "The Late Show", and gets me to my second of three "back to school" films, the third will be along in just a couple of days. (Damn, I wish I had seen that Nat Faxon was in two of my school-based films, I could have connected them. But then I might have missed everything I watched in-between...)
I think I watched 7 films this week from 7 different genres - I had a romance/drama about old Hollywood, a bedroom farce, a Western, a documentary about a horror film, a musical/political ensemble drama, and a 1970's detective spoof. Finishing with a school-based comedy, there's no clear theme for the week - this has probably happened before, but it's rarely been so noticeable. This is my fractured process now that I'm picking films just for the linking, my choices are essentially based on whether or not a film can get me to the end of the year.
14 films until I take a break in September, then I've got 22 films on the docket for October (I have to leave time for NY Comic-Con and a real vacation) and by Halloween I'm really going to feel like I'm in the home stretch for 2017, I should only have 37 films left at that point. I'll watch 19 of them in November and leave 18 for December - still, I've got plans to get out to the movie theater a few more times, to see "Blade Runner 2049", "Thor: Ragnarok", "Justice League" and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi". I'm glad that my linking is going to allow all of those, but I've still got to find a way to watch all four "Hunger Games" films, that's connective tissue that makes the rest possible. There's a DVD set on Amazon for about $23, that's probably the cheapest way for me to make it to the end of Year 9.
THE PLOT: A guidance counselor mistakenly sends out the wrong transcript to Stanford University under the name of an over-achieving high-schooler.
AFTER: I realize this is not the time of year that high-school students find out if they got into the college they wanted, that happens sort of midway through senior year, but work with me, OK? By now anyone who graduated this past spring should have their ducks in a row and is probably packing up to move into the dorm, but at least right now everyone's focused on the start of the new school year, so that's my tie-in. And this is the transition film between this year's high-school film ("Hamlet 2") and this year's college film. I couldn't work in "Everybody Wants Some!" this year, because it links to nothing else on my list. Hey, those are the risks when you cast a film and forget to put any stars into it, according to my rules.
This one has plenty of stars, lots of comedians that I tend to like. So many that I'm kicking myself for all the missed linking opportunities that I didn't see. Doesn't matter, the die is cast, and I know exactly the path I want to take for the rest of 2017. (Still, why didn't I see that Ben Stiller connection? Or the Leslie Mann one? That's what I get for not looking at the big picture...). Anyway, my point was that there were enough great comic actors here to compensate for the presence of Jack Black as a stoner loser mostly walking around in his underwear.
We feel for the central character here, because he figures out what he wants to do with his life ,which is a very powerful feeling. After connecting with a well-written book, he wants to become a writer himself, and he feels that to accomplish that, he needs to study at Stanford, where the author of that book is a professor. From that point on, it seems like the deck is stacked against him - even though he's class president and his grades are excellent, his guidance counselor sends in the transcript of a classmate with a similar name, and then refuses to admit her mistake. From this point, things spiral out of control, a meeting with someone on the admissions board is ruined by his crazy family, and another meeting with the dean of admissions is another disaster.
He can't even get an honest opinion about the story that he has written, because he feels that everyone who comments on it has an agenda, or may just be telling him what he wants to hear. But in the middle of his disastrous visit to the Stanford campus, he happens upon the writer who inspired him in the first place, and so he finally gets an honest opinion that he believes, and finally feels he could be a good writer (probably poor, but good). He also learns that since Orange County inspired the story, and is full of the characters that he wants to write about, that he may not need to leave it after all.
I remember back when I figured out that I could pursue filmmaking as a college major, and possibly as a career. Once you have a direction like that to orient yourself, it's easy to make some concrete plans. I applied for four colleges, I think, and I wanted to go to NYU but considered Fordham an acceptable safety school. One visit to the NYU campus and that probably sealed the deal in my mind. Now, one very important thing I learned in NYU film school was that I might not be cut out to be a director, and I made my peace with that - I felt it took an arrogance to direct a film that I didn't have (or want to have) so I set myself on a producing track instead. I also remember a time I didn't get the internship that I wanted, and I felt at the time it was a huge setback - but I took a different one, met a lot of great people, and tried not to look back. So I think I connected with this film's message - there are always going to be setbacks, and you may find from time to time that the path you thought you wanted to be on isn't all it's cracked up to be, and sometimes you then have to make the best of the path that you do end up on, and that's just how life goes sometimes.
Now, when I look back on 30 years spent in various jobs in film production, it's hard to imagine things happening in any different way - what if I had gone to Fordham? What if I had been picked for the internship that I wanted? What if I had the balls my senior year to direct a thesis film, instead of chickening out and graduating early? I can't even predict what my life would be like if I had gone down any of those "roads not taken", it's just too weird to consider.
If I've got any NITPICK POINT to make tonight, it's that "all-or-nothing" attitude that the main character has, plus the fact that he resorts immediately to emergency methods to get into Stanford, instead of going through the proper channels to fix the mistake (which, admittedly, would not have been as funny). Another fix would have been to attend another school while the mistake got corrected, and then transfer to Stanford for sophomore year. But again, this is a logical solution that probably would have been out of place in a madcap comedy.
There were also some plot threads that went nowhere, like the stray dog or the possible relationship between the main character's best friends, but I'm inclined to let those slide.
Also starring Colin Hanks (last seen in "Vacation"), Jack Black (last seen in "The D Train"), Catherine O'Hara (last seen in "Heartburn"), John Lithgow (last seen in "The Big Fix"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Jane Adams (ditto), Harold Ramis (last seen in "Ghostheads"), Garry Marshall (last heard in "How Sweet It Is!"), Leslie Mann (last seen in "I Love You Phillip Morris"), Dana Ivey (also last seen in "Heartburn"), Schuyler Fisk, Kyle Howard, R.J. Knoll, Bret Harrison, Mike White (also last seen in "The D Train"), George Murdock, Carly Pope (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Olivia Rosewood, Monica Keena, Nat Faxon (last seen in "Hamlet 2") with cameos from Chevy Chase (also last seen in "Vacation"), Ben Stiller (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "Now You See Me 2")
RATING: 6 out of 10 surfboards
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