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HARVARD MAN

Within the first five minutes of writer/director James Toback’s film, title Ivy Leaguer Alan (Adrian Grenier) enjoys an orgasm between the thighs of Boston College cheerleader Cindy (Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar), sprints off to arrive late to play in a Crimson basketball game, and learns that his parents’ house has been destroyed by a tornado. He asks Cindy, the daughter of a reputed mobster, for 100 grand to rebuild the house. All he has to do is fix the Dartmouth game, but of course, shit happens. The FBI gets a whiff of what’s up, the mob wants retribution, and Alan, who is also sleeping with his polymorphously perverse philosophy professor (Joey Lauren Adams, from Chasing Amy), decides to tune it all out by taking LSD.

Leave it to push-button provocateur and Harvard alum writer/director James Toback (Black and White and Two Girls and a Guy) to make Cambridge and the World’s Greatest University appear a den of depravity. Harvard Man is slight, preposterous, and remarkably entertaining. The camp factor, whether intended or not, hits the mark; the women are hyperboles of sexual ripeness, the dialogue is grandiloquent, and the moral landscape is nonexistent. Throw in the local landmarks and the fisheye acid trip and it’s almost worthwhile.

BY TOM MEEK

Issue Date: May 16 - 23, 2002
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