Stealing Harvard

Tom Green, an MTV comic best-known for Short-Lived Marriage To Drew Barrymore No.645, single-handedly re-drew the boundaries of cinema with last year’s unbelievably incompetent Freddy Got Fingered, winner of multiple Golden Raspberry awards, which he wrote and directed himself, as well as chipping in the most demented acting performance in world history. Freddy Got Fingered , though very possibly the worst film ever made, is also without doubt one of the most enjoyable and truly unforgettable: the shock is that Green not only hasn’t been run out of Hollywood, but actually lives to hit our screens again in the somewhat similar Stealing Harvard (though it’s notable that no-one was insane, or inspired, enough to let him direct again).

The totally daft plot stars Jason Lee as John Plummer, an unremarkable loser who has saved $30,000 in order to buy a house with his headwreckingly helium-voiced fiancee (Leslie Mann) – unfortunately, he has also pledged to pay for his niece’s Harvard fees, forcing him to come up with another thirty grand out of nowhere, the desperate quest for which forms the basis of Stealing Harvard’s eccentric sequence of events.

Absolutely pathetic on any number of levels, there is still a playfully awful je ne sais quoi about the film, as with Freddy, which somehow compels you to take it to your heart. Green’s utter lack of inhibition – visibly manic, he may well literally suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome – makes it hard for anyone sharing the screen with him to get noticed, but Lee and Mann provide appropriately sub-serious performances, while the film’s concise 80-minute duration is an especially wise call.

The Oscars committee won’t be losing any sleep, but in its own way, you’ve never seen anything like this before.