Stealing Harvard
Directed by: Bruce McCulloch
Written by: Peter Tolan, Martin Hynes
Starring: Jason Lee, Tom Green, Leslie Mann, Dennis Farina, Chris Penn

Bruce McCulloch can’t direct. I don’t need to say much more than that, but I will. The former Kid in the Hall has failed us, big time.

“Stealing Harvard” is a generic, unoriginal comedy that is about as memorable as it is funny, which is to say, not very much.

On paper, this movie seems like it could work. The comedic styles of movie stars/skateboard powers Jason Lee and Tom Green seem like an unstoppable team, despite the rampant unoriginality in the script. However, Bruce McCulloch simply cannot frame or time his talented cast enough to make Stealing Harvard worth, at the very most, a Tuesday admission price. And this is coming from one of the very few left who worship the ground Tom Green walks on.

When John (Lee) makes a promise on tape many years back after his daughter loses in a spelling bee (She cant spell “tarp”), he ends up sacrificing the 30,000 dollars he has saved to buy his wife and himself a new home. Unable to tell his wife the truth, John recruited Duff (Green), his loser friend from high school, to find a way to get the money. So they turn to a life of crime. Its been done, but the idea should make for a funny movie. And trust me, the supporting cast is there (Megan Mullally of “Big Daddy”, Dennis Farina of “Snatch”), and the lines are there, but the timing is off and dare I say, unrehearsed, Tom Green has actually been too toned down (though the way he stammers his lines, so very un-movie-star-ish, still made me smile) though made the focus of most scenes, Lee has been made somewhat wooden in his Everyman character (it would seem Lee is only affective when angry and sarcastic, as he is eternally in Kevin Smith’s films). The situations don’t necessarily build to anything, and the resolution to the film comes very easy.

One can’t help but wonder if the pending Hollywood strike kept this movie from receiving the extra attention and help it needed to turn from a barely passable “C” film to a comic gem, which it very well could have been with a responsible, capable filmmaker at the helm. Sorry, Bruce, I love you, your cameo is quite funny, your albums are great. But you need to learn how to frame people and tell people when they need to do something over. Its that important, especially when I have to pay almost twice the price for your movie at Silvercity instead of at AMC. — The Goon

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