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Harvard Man
Metascore
49 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 20 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 20
  3. Negative: 4 out of 20
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  1. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    80
    In a summer of clones, Harvard Man is something rare and riveting: a wild ride that relies on more than special effects.
  2. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    How can one man juggle two women, possible expulsion, Mafia baseball bats and the meaning of life, while on acid? This is the kind of question only a Toback film thinks to ask, let alone answer.
  3. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Loren King
    75
    Toback's films deliver a lot of bang for the buck. He's one of the few serious and original directors who can mix group sex and talk of existentialism; a fast-paced basketball sequence cut with scenes of Mafia members plotting a hit; and an in-class philosophy lecture stylishly edited with Alan's memories of a contradictory in-bed discussion.
  4. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    The first half of this freewheeling comedy-drama finds Toback at his imaginative best. The second half sinks into silliness.
  5. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    Adams sparkles with quick-mindedness and verbal agility. This is a worthy and underused talent.
  6. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Chuck Wilson
    70
    As with most of Toback's films, there are Big Ideas being bandied about that never quite coalesce, a failing that, this time at least, mirrors his hero's own hyped-out search for meaning.
  7. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    70
    Mr. Toback uses his improbable, conventional story as the trelliswork for a series of wild and florid riffs about sex, ethics and the delirium of renegade moviemaking.
  8. Variety
    Reviewed by: Lisa Nesselson
    70
    Wildly uneven yet perversely coherent ode to the lure of sexual and chemical experimentation, the precariousness of sanity and the sheer suggestible power of paranoia.
  9. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    Sillier than it is clever, and Toback's self-indulgence is tiresome. He's a genuine auteur, all right, but his life and the funky tastes that inspire him are just not as interesting as he thinks they are.
    All this critic's reviews
  10. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    50
    A fast and clever con-gone-wrong comedy that reflects the writer-director's characteristic blend of the intellectual and the criminal. But it lacks anyone to care about--even the repellent characters are less than fascinating--and the result is a crisply made movie that is no more than mildly amusing.
  11. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    50
    Toback has taken a distinctly '60s-ish personal experience and done his best to transplant it into the current, vastly different, cultural milieu. Harvard Man is a semi-throwback, a reminiscence without nostalgia or sentimentality.
    All this critic's reviews
  12. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Bill Stamets
    50
    The film suffers from clunky smart-aleck dialogue and an overabundance of jump cuts and crane shots, and despite its libertine air, Toback repeatedly cautions that acid is a fast track to insanity, especially in combination with Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
  13. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    42
    A characteristically engorged and sloppy coming-of-age movie from the filmmaker (''Harvard '66'') who, in his body of work, indulges his fantasies as fetishistically as other men finger their cigars.
  14. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    40
    The story's self-conscious seaminess cries out for the ministrations of a filmmaker like direct-to-video auteur Gregory Hippolyte.
  15. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    40
    Sure, sex and drugs can take you to a higher plane. But not if a movie crushes your will to live first.
  16. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    40
    Obsessives can be seductive, and Toback is interesting for the same reasons his films are often unendurable: He's not an artist so much as a giant pop-cult testicle pumping absurd energy in a rampaging, self-justifying gout.
  17. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    30
    Channels Toback in his purest form, which will probably be a treat for auteurists and a headache for just about everyone else.
  18. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    30
    There's no transcending a prosaic plot and several flat performances.
    All this critic's reviews
  19. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Megan Lehmann
    25
    Psst! Wanna vicariously experience a consciousness-raising LSD trip and watch Sarah Michelle Gellar star in some explicit sex scenes?
  20. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Phil Hall
    10
    An astonishing mess.
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