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Wes Anderson's follow-up to the quirky
Bottle Rocket is a wonderfully unorthodox coming-of-age story that ranks with
Harold and Maude and
The Graduate in the pantheon of timeless cult classics. Jason Schwartzman (son of Talia Shire and nephew of Francis Coppola) stars as Max Fischer, a 15-year-old attending the prestigious Rushmore Academy on scholarship, where he's failing all of his classes but is the superstar of the school's extracurricular activities (head of the drama club, the beekeeper club, the fencing club...). Possessing boundless confidence and chutzpah, as well as an aura of authority he seems to have been born with, Max finds two unlikely soulmates in his permutations at Rushmore: industrial magnate and Rushmore alumnus Herman Blume (Bill Murray) and first-grade teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). His alliance with Blume and crush on Miss Cross, however, are thrown out of kilter by his expulsion from Rushmore, and a budding romance between the two adults that threatens Max's own designs on the lovely schoolteacher.
Never stooping to sentimentality or schmaltz, Anderson and cowriter Owen Wilson have fashioned a wickedly intelligent and wildly funny tale of young adulthood that hits all the right notes in its mix of melancholy and optimism. As played by Schwartzman, Max is both immediately endearing and ferociously irritating: smarter than all the adults around him, with little sense of his shortcomings, he's an unstoppable dynamo who commands grudging respect despite his outlandish projects (including a school play about Vietnam). Murray, as the tycoon who determinedly wages war with Max for the affections of Miss Cross, is a revelation of middle-aged resignation. Disgusted with his family, his life, and himself, he's turned around by both Max's antagonism and Miss Cross's love. Williams is equally affecting as the teacher who still carries a torch for her dead husband, and the superb supporting cast also includes Seymour Cassel as Max's barber father, Brian Cox as the frustrated headmaster of Rushmore, and a hilarious Mason Gamble as Max's young charge. Put this one on your shelf of modern masterpieces. --Mark Englehart
Wes Anderson's smart, refreshing picture is all about Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), who is in the tenth grade at Rushmore Academy-or, to put it in Max's own terms, in heaven. He runs everything from the school beekeepers to the rather ambitious theatre group; he hangs out with Mr. Blume (Bill Murray), the father of a school friend; and, although his grades are woeful, Max compensates by falling in love with a teacher, Miss Cross (Olivia Williams). All is well until Blume, too, falls in love with Miss Cross; from here on, Max's world starts to come apart at the seams-not that you would know it from his big, blank, bespectacled face. The whole movie marks the triumph of the deadpan; Schwartzman is cautious but stubbornly optimistic, while Murray is possessed by the mania of near-despair, but neither kicks up much of a fuss. They make the best and most disconcerting odd couple that American movies have produced in a long while, and they lightly demolish the social hierarchy: how can Blume be Max's elder and better, when the child is so plainly the father of the man? Anderson finds the ideal comic rhythm for all this-sliding off the beat for a few surreal gags but always kicking back fast into the plot. As a result, what could have been merely arch or wacky turns into something more touching-a mature riff on the absurdity of growing up. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
DVD ~ Luke Wilson
DVD ~ Owen Wilson
DVD ~ Bill Murray
DVD ~ Owen Wilson
DVD ~ Jason Schwartzman
DVD ~ Owen Wilson
