BEFORE: Jason Biggs is back, but it's Twink Caplan that carries over from "I Could Never Be Your Woman". The last two films were last minute drop-ins, so the original plan was to get here straight from "Boys and Girls". I reserve the right to re-program at any time, not just to avoid an unexpected break in the chain.
The director carries over too, Amy Heckerling, though she made this one a few years before "I Could Never Be Your Woman". She also directed "Clueless", "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Look Who's Talking". It makes sense that a director might want to use the same actors again and again, especially in the minor roles, some directors love to cast their friends in those. So it also makes sense that if I link movies by actor, naturally once in a while I'll see a couple films in a row from the same director, especially if I"m also organizing by genre.
THE PLOT: A college student, branded a loser by his roommates and booted from the dorm, falls in love with a coed who has eyes for their condescending professor.
AFTER: Amy Heckerling is known for one high-school film, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which was set in L.A. I was willing to bet she grew up in Callfornia, but she didn't - it turns out that "Fast Times" was based on a year in the life of Cameron Crowe, from when he was a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine who went undercover to observe high-school students. But Heckerling DID go to college at NYU, and that means I'm looking for something autobiographical here, not just for her but also for ME, because that's where I went to film school.
I don't think they ever SAY "NYU" in this film, but come on, there are lots of shots of Washington Square Park, and at one point somebody mentions Rubin Hall, which I remember was the name of one of the dorms, and I'll bet that was the one that Heckerling lived in, or at least it was the easiest name for her to remember. The girl that Paul is pining for is actually in a relationship with their literature professor, and so yep, it's another love triangle tonight, student to student to teacher. The difference NOW, though, after the #metoo movement is that teachers would be so paranoid about getting caught in an affair with a student and afraid of losing their tenure that they would probably take great care to NOT get into that relationship in the first place. But apparently back in 2000, the "solution" to the problem would have been a little different, namely "we've got to keep this secret". Umm, sure, that'll fix it.
Paul also has a problem with his three roommates, because he's the odd man out, the "LOSER" and the non-cool one, while the other three are tight and they're all party animals. Paul's there on a Regent's scholarship, which means he has to maintain at least a B average, or he'll lose that scholarship money. I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how scholarships work. I got a little bit of a money myself from a National Merit Scholarship, due to a high score on the PSATs, but really, compared to NYU's tuition, it was just a drop in a very large bucket. But I grok his struggle, he's got to watch his expenses, and that means he can't just buy beer for everyone in the room or afford to eat anywhere but the Student Union on the meal plan. Yeah, that brings me back. I burned though most of the money I saved up in high school just on expenses while I was at NYU, it's a tough town - and that was back in the late 1980's.
Paul's roommates, after excessive partying and a burst waterbed, make up some bogus charges about Paul being racist and non-hygienic and hard to get along with, and convince the housing board to remove him from their room, and he ends up living in a veterinary clinic, where he can apparently sleep at night, as long as he agrees to feed the animals in his spare time, and also act as a night watchman of sorts. Yeah, this really makes no sense, no college would have some kind of crazy arrangement with a vet clinic, but after the initial orientation of his duties there, we never see another vet or nurse or staffer again, which is more than a little strange.
(I was in something of a situation like this at NYU, a room with 5 students living in it, one of whom was just a bit weirder than the others, and I was honestly kind of glad that it wasn't me. But the other four of us did make that guy's life miserable until he moved out by his own choice, and I kind of regretted that for years, but I encountered him somewhere down the road and apologized for my culpability in that madness. I think I just wanted to be on the cool kids side for once, but we for sure took things too far.)
Dora, meanwhile, is working as a waitress in a strip joint, but the club owners give her the worst section of the club to sell drinks to, and then get mad at her when she doesn't sell enough drinks. She doesn't have to strip (because she's a good girl, after all) but if she had, that could have been a solution to her money problems BUT no, she gets fired and then applies for every job under the sun, modeling or making posters or trying to work in a convenience store, but she comes up empty every time. This also doesn't really feel like how strip clubs or job-hunting works, either, it just feels like the screenwriter is manufacturing a lot of problems for both Paul and Dora, if I'm being honest. Eventually she lands on a scheme to sell her unfertilized eggs, which, sure, some women do but she fails to investigate what the long-term medical risks of doing that might be.
Meanwhile, Paul's roommates face a drug and alcohol crackdown in their dorm, because one student OD's, and they come up with the crazy idea of reconciling with Paul, just to use the vet clinic where he sleeps to run a phony fundraiser for a fake charity, and at the same time providing drugged drinks to all the girls that party there, in order to make it easier for them to have sex with them. Yes, Paul unwillingly helps his roommates date-rape a bunch of college girls, which, you know, sure sounds inappropriate NOW, but I guess back in 2000, it was a different time?
Also meanwhile, the professor Dora's sleeping with, who insists on keeping their relationship quiet, was listed as her "next of kin" on her medical records, and this was important because she drank a roofied drink at the vet clinic after she HAPPENED to bump into one of Paul's roommates while she was job-hunting, and she missed her date with Paul at the Everclear concert completely. Paul, being the decent guy he is, finds her and takes her to the hospital, where she gets her stomach pumped and recovers at the vet clinic over a long weekend. NITPICK POINT: Again, there's NO STAFF at the vet clinic for a whole weekend? Nobody notices the college girl sleeping it off in the exam room? This seems really unlikely.
The college roommates find out that the professor was listed as Dora's next of kin (which also doesn't make sense, because she's got FAMILY up in the Bronx or Westchester, where she lives when she's not at the professor's apartment, why isn't her FAMILY listed as "next of kin"? Oh, because she emancipated herself? Nah, that didn't happen because the paperwork to do that at City Hall was so complicated, as Andy Dick's character pointed out. So it's kind of weird that this movie often seems to be working against itself, certain things just contradict other things and certain other things keep going back and forth. The professor is failing Paul because he's a dick, then he's giving him a "B" because his paper was just OK, then he's giving him a passing grade and a peek at the final because he thinks Paul's part of the blackmail scheme, but then he's giving him a failing grade because he's NOT part of the scheme. Jesus, make up your mind already, is Paul passing the lit class or failing it? I can't keep it straight because it changed so many times...
So many other lingering questions here, like why didn't Dora just sell her pantyhose to that creepy guy at the bar if she needed more money? That's a bit disgusting, sure, but money is money and that was the problem, she wasn't making enough on tips. And can you really sneak into the second act of a Broadway show just by hanging out on the street outside the theater during intermission? It seems to me they would check that sort of thing, or there would be two people who wouldn't be able to sit down after the smoking break because Paul and Dora were in their seats, right? The director seems to have taken a LOT of liberties with the way that everything works, from NYU rules to Broadway hacks to how to deal with a teacher having sex with a student.
And the roommates NEVER get in trouble for wrecking the vet clinic or giving date-rape drugs in drinks to hundreds of girls? That just seems misguided and the story seems incomplete. Oh, sure, all the bad characters get their comeuppances in the "Where Are They Now" segment at the end, but nobody ever gets punished specifically for their very bad behavior, so it all seems kind of unfinished. Well, at least Paul and Dora got together in the end, so that makes everything OK? We'll never find out what happened to the video-store clerk, the homeless woman or the loud cell phone guy, though. As for the director, she blamed the studio's insistence on a PG-13 rating, which meant that she couldn't really tell the story she wanted to tell. Me, I just wanted her to finish one of the dangling plot-lines, really, any of them, just one.
Also starring Jason Biggs (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Mena Suvari (last seen in "Domino"), Zak Orth (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), Thomas Sadoski (last seen in "The Last Word"), Jimmi Simpson (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Godsend"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Bobby Slayton (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Robert Miano (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Mollie Heckerling, Colleen Camp (last seen in "An Imperfect Murder"), Brian Backer, Meredith Scott Lynn (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Stuart Cornfeld, Scott Thomson (last seen in "Smokey and the Bandit"), Kedar Brown (last seen in "Enemy"), Rick Demas, Sanjay Talwar, Tracy Dawson, Carolyn Goff (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Nick Bacon (ditto), Martin Roach (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles")
with cameos from Art Alexakis, Alan Cumming (last heard in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Andy Dick (last seen in "Employee of the Month"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Steven Wright (ditto), Taylor Negron (last seen in "Gun Shy"), David Spade (last seen in "Jack and Jill"),
RATING: 4 out of 10 model airplanes in Paul's dad's basement
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