HARVARD MAN (James Toback, 2002)

Reviewed: July 4, 2002

Four reasons why James Toback's Harvard Man is one of the worst films of the new millennium:

(1) The Editing. Out of the thousands of films I've seen in my lifetime, the distinction for the worst edited out of them all must go to Harvard Man. From the opening frames I knew I was in trouble: the movie begins with a constantly revolving, utterly pointless, obnoxiously disorientating four-way split screen; two screens are devoted to a couple having sex to classical music, the other two screens to a basketball game. The squares literally rotate around each other in futility, creating havoc for viewer and illustrating an immediate desperation on Toback's part. It felt like he was screaming out to me, "Be forewarned, the movie you are about to see is absolute shit, but please, please, please pay attention!"

The editing only went downhill from there. This is a film where many, many conversations, no matter how simple, no matter how inane (and trust me, all the conversations in this film are certainly inane), are edited together with jump cuts. Distracting, useless, infuriating jump cuts. If Harvard Man was screened for Godard, he might kill himself knowing the horror he's wrought. A character will say a single sentence. Jump cut to the character saying the next sentence. Jump cut t, the character saying the next sentence. Jump cut to another character responding with a sentence. Jump cut to said character responding with another sentence. What's important to note is that these jump cuts don't seem to eclipse any substantive time in the conversation-- it seems as if Toback only took out a few frames per cut, heightening the visual annoyance but having no concrete effect on the characters, their words or actions.

Plus, Toback constantly intercuts scenes that are occurring far apart from each other on the chronological timeline. For instance, he will have two characters talking about a basketball game one of the characters is going to be playing in. Cut to the character playing in the basketball game. Cut back to the characters talking about the basketball game. Cut back to the basketball game. While this technique can be very effective if used properly and sparingly (Soderbergh famously used the technique in Out of Sight, creating one of the most memorable, sexy and powerful love scenes in cinema history), Toback has no sense of time, place or narrative and his editing choices are totally devoid of any rhyme or reason. Checking the credit scroll at the end, I was sure Edward Scissorhands would be revealed as Harvard Man's editor, as I constantly felt like someone took the original camera negatives, closed their eyes and began chopping away at random. Turns out the editor is Suzy Elmiger, and considering the excellent work she did on films like Joe Gould's Secret and Big Night, the blame must fall squarely on Toback.

(2) The Script. While I'm a big fan of Toback's scripts for The Gambler, Bugsy and Two Girls and a Guy, there is not a single thing this script gets right-- there are no remotely believable characters, there is no credible story and Toback writes himself into a cliché at every possible opportunity. Even Toback's usually impeccable ear for dialogue has turned to rusted tin. Adding insult to injury, a large portion of Harvard Man's plot is a retread of The Gambler's; both films have crucial plot points centered around a desperate character throwing a college basketball game in order to win money from gangsters and remove themselves from debt. Allow me to quote Stephanie Zacharek's plot summary over at Salon.com:

"Harvard Man tells the story of a brainy Harvard philosophy major and basketball player named Alan (Adrian Grenier), who gets into trouble illegally raising money to buy a new house for his parents, whose old one was destroyed by a tornado. Meanwhile, he searches for enlightenment by taking drugs and screwing a lot."

There are scenes and situations of such improbability and stupidity that I found myself laughing out loud. For instance: Eric Stoltz and Rebecca Gayheart play two FBI agents in the film. Toback asks us to believe that...

(A) After an ongoing, inside investigation into a bigwig mobster and his operations that has clearly lasted years, Stoltz and Gayheart receive their big case break when a college basketball player throws a match. Huh? Based on their undercover positioning in the gangster's organization (Stoltz has worked himself so far up the criminal ladder he is now the head mobster's right hand man), they must have enough evidence to put the gangster and his minions away on thirty murder charges, let alone a nearly infinite amount of illegal racketeering and gambling charges by now. I didn't have the slightest idea why Adrian Grenier was the key to their case and neither does Toback.

(B) These two FBI agents work entirely alone out of a tiny barren office in an anonymous building, never ever having to report to any other higher agents, doing anything they want, at any time. Toback expects us to believe they are the only two agents involved in this massive undercover investigation.

(C) Furthermore, these two FBI agents have absolutely no scruples and are so motherfucking insanely irresponsible that first of all, Rebecca Gayheart immediately offers sex to Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in exchange for her cooperation and second off, Gayheart and Stoltz end up blowing their entire case by spontaneously engaging in a drugged out menage a toi with a total stranger whom Grenier's character and Joey Lauren Adam's professor character (who seems to have known Gayheart from a past relationship or some shit) set them up with, photographed them with and then blackmailed them into dropping the case with (using said photos). Uh... yeah.

(3) The Acting, although this must be severely qualified. I've been watching lots of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD recently. It's a stunningly brilliant show and Sarah Michelle Gellar -- an actress of enormous talent and range -- is astonishing on it. Of course Toback manages to waste her entirely in Harvard Man, and while she successfully sheds her Buffy image, a lot of her line readings fall flat. But wait, I don't think it's her fault.

Most of Harvard Man seems ADRed, which means lines of dialogue were re-recorded in a studio after filming was completed and then synced back up with their original scenes. While no halfway sane director likes using ADR cause it obviously eliminates the spontaneity of performance (and if the soundtrack is not mixed well, the dead air on ADR lines can be obvious and the audience is immediately taken out of the film), occasionally it's a necessity if there was too much stray noise on the day of filming because of say, high winds when shooting an outside scene or other problems of that variety. Why Harvard Man seemed to require so much ADRing, I dare not say, but the effect is sad to watch. Combined with Toback's aforementioned jump-cutting around conversations and all the awful dialogue, I really didn't even feel like I was watching a professionally made film. People don't seem like they're actually talking to one another; it literally plays like an Ed Wood flick.

Even a great actor like Eric Stoltz comes off bad, let alone star Grenier who simply doesn't have the weight, the charisma nor the talent (at least, the talent as extrapolated by Toback) to carry this movie. Interestingly, Joey Lauren Adams (I love her voice and I loved her in Chasing Amy) fairs the best. I don't know if she was just lucky that less of her lines required ADR than everyone else's or if she's actually a talented enough actress to transcend Toback's foolishness. Or maybe my ADR theory is entirely wrong and Toback is just such an atrocious director he manages to sabotage fantastic actors into mediocrity.

(4) Unremitting pretension and arrogance. There are drawn out, boring-as-shit scenes of Joey Lauren Adams lecturing a college course on Big Ideas, which unfortunately for the audience is the perfect opportunity for Toback to insert all the pretentious as hell and hackneyed philosophical concepts he feels his damn film is about. Talk about using a sledgehammer to hit a film's themes on the nose. Hey, what a coincidence, The Gambler also had scenes with James Caan as a college professor lecturing students about Big Ideas, but at least in that film the ideas were germane to the action.

Toback's arrogance manifests itself in every frame. To illustrate how disgustingly narcissistic James Toback is, I will quote a few lines from his Two Girls and a Guy commentary track, word for word. In reference to the first time Robert Downey Jr.'s character enters his apartment (note: Toback is saying these statements to Downey Jr. himself, who shares the track with him):

"You come in here with such a great look and such a flair [that] it's my favorite entrance in the history of movies, this walk in here. I mean the shades, the hair, this is just, this is... I defy you to tell me a better entrance in the history of movies."

And later on: "Now here's the scene that everybody, uh-- Max Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy's son told me it's his favorite scene in the history of movies, this scene in front of the mirror, a couple of weeks ago and um, a lot of people have said that."

Or, to quote Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice: "Of course, Toback went to Harvard; it would never occur to him to make a movie about something other than himself (or his cock-tugging daydreams)."

(I should also point out that according to an interview in INTERVIEW magazine, Toback claims he took the most hits of LSD ever recorded. It's this magnitude of self-absorption that nosedives Harvard Man into obliteration.)

Addendum: I have seen much praise lavished on the Grenier-is-high-on-lots-of-LSD-centerpiece. Truth be told, it's nothing special. It begins with some simple and amusing CGI distorting of human faces and various objects, then culminates in a bombastic, multi-layered soundtrack of echoing voices. Big deal. I never felt the glory and euphoria of being on LSD, which at least during the first half of Grenier's trip I most definitely should have.

Return home.