Dead Man on Campus

With the exception of Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer, I can't think of any intentionally funny film about suicide. Now we get Dead Man on Campus, a moribund stinker that has been moldering in a studio morgue drawer for some time. Tom Everett Scott, whose career has crashed since his Tom-Hanks's-younger-brother charm scored in That Thing You Do, plays Josh, a naive go-getting freshman on scholarship whose drive falls prey to the bongs and bad attitude of rich-kid party guy Cooper (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Zack from Saved by the Bell). Facing failure and expulsion, the pair come up with a desperate ploy, as do the filmmakers: an old college statute states that if a resident of a dorm commits suicide, everyone living there gets A's. In a series of stunts that make Weekend at Bernie's seem the apotheosis of wit, they seek a suicidal roommate and plot to drive him to self-destruction. And indeed, self-destruction must have been in the minds of everyone connected with this film.

-- Peter Keough