It has a caffeinated, sloppy brilliance, sparkling with ideas you wish had been developed with more care, but animated by an energy that puts the dutiful efforts of more disciplined grade-grubbers to shame.
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06/27/02
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Harvard Man (2002)
33
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:36
Fresh:12
Rotten:24
Average Rating:4.6/10
Consensus: Harvard Man is a pretentious, incoherent mess.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Apr 12, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: This innovative drama from writer and director James Toback (BUGSY, BLACK AND WHITE) follows the travails of Alan Jensen (Adrian Grenier), a Harvard student determined to live life to the fullest... [More]
Starring: Adrian Grenier, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eric Stoltz, Rebecca Gayheart
Director: James Toback
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Reviews for Harvard Man
Top CriticThere's a certain niche audience that will eat up Harvard Man -- but whether that's the mob-movie set, the college-movie set, or the sex-movie set, I really have no idea.
07/30/02
Grenier is terrific, bringing an unforced, rapid-fire delivery to Toback’s Heidegger- and Nietzsche-referencing dialogue.
10/28/02
Might have been played as a glum cautionary tale, but in Toback's hands it becomes a lark--flashy, florid and blissfully over-the-top.
08/26/02
A cautionary tale about the grandiosity of a college student who sees himself as impervious to a fall.
06/28/02
Gambling and throwing a basketball game for money isn't a new plot -- in fact Toback himself used it in Black and White. But Toback's deranged immediacy makes it seem fresh again.
04/12/02
Toback offers a complex, borderline campy, and oddly entertaining study of modern moral dilemmas.
07/11/02
Top CriticPutting it all out there and shaping it into some kind of contained whole is something else again. Although that never quite happens here, there's plenty to appreciate.
07/02/02
Top CriticHas everything you could ever want from a Toback movie: lurid sex, shocking excess and an out-of- nowhere thoughtfulness that's not put on.
04/12/02
Top CriticIn a summer of clones, Harvard Man is something rare and riveting: a wild ride that relies on more than special effects.
07/01/02
Top CriticWhat makes the movie work is that the premise, which sounds like a comedy, is treated with the seriousness of life and death.
07/13/02
Top CriticFor those who accept the offbeat premise, the film ultimately delivers a satisfying dramatic exploration of the ways we create ourselves.
07/14/02
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12/06/05
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12/08/02
The long-delayed flick's weak story and poor casting shows that Gellar is too cute to be Corleone; Adams is too high-pitched to be tenured; and Gayheart is still too whatever to care about.
06/28/02
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06/15/02
Harvard Man is a semi-throwback, a reminiscence without nostalgia or sentimentality.
07/03/02
An overstylized, puréed mélange of sex, psychology, drugs and philosophy. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes indulgent -- but never less than pure wankery.
05/27/03
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08/31/02
I think it was Plato who said, 'I think, therefore I know better than to rush to the theatre for this one.'
09/06/02
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