Harvard Man

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In a summer of clones, Harvard Man is something rare and riveting: a wild ride that relies on more than special effects.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Adams sparkles with quick-mindedness and verbal agility. This is a worthy and underused talent.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The first half of this freewheeling comedy-drama finds Toback at his imaginative best. The second half sinks into silliness.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Chicago Tribune Loren King

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.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

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.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

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.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

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.

Chicago Reader Bill Stamets

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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

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.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

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.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The story's self-conscious seaminess cries out for the ministrations of a filmmaker like direct-to-video auteur Gregory Hippolyte.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Sure, sex and drugs can take you to a higher plane. But not if a movie crushes your will to live first.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

There's no transcending a prosaic plot and several flat performances.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Channels Toback in his purest form, which will probably be a treat for auteurists and a headache for just about everyone else.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Psst! Wanna vicariously experience a consciousness-raising LSD trip and watch Sarah Michelle Gellar star in some explicit sex scenes?

Film Threat Phil Hall

An astonishing mess.