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Harvard Man
Cowboy Pictures


7.0

based on 20 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for drug use, language and some strong sexuality

Starring Adrian Grenier, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joey Lauren Adams, Eric Stoltz, Rebecca Gayheart, Gianni Russo, Ray Allen, and Michael Aparo

Alan (Grenier) is a Harvard student indulging in all of life's more interesting vices - illicit sex, drugs and high-stakes gambling, with a little Heidegger thrown in for good measure. (Cowboy Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	James Toback
DIRECTED BY:	James Toback
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 29, 2002 Video: October 29, 2002 Theatrical: June 28, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Canada / USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a 5:
This was the film that got made, but "Harvard Man" gave me the impression that we're supposed to speculate about how this story would've unfolded had Alan (Adrian Grenier) not ingested all that LSD. That girl who engineered the drugs is like the screenwriter's antagonist and prevents the narrative from flowing in a lock-step manner. If that's the angle you want to engage with the film from, "Harvard Man" can be construed as being a poor man's Charlie Kaufmann concoction. If you don't, it's a mess. Obviously, casting against type, Joey Lauren Adams is surprisingly convincing as a philosophy professor. Her provocative extra-cirricular activities reminded me of Joan Allen's boot-knockin' in "The Contender", in which, both films challenge our temptation to apply the double-standard that a woman's sex life undermines their ability to be a politician, or college educator, respectively, we can abide by. But Sarah Michelle-Gellar and Adrian Grenier are terrible, or maybe it's the characters they play.

Alex M. gave it a 2:
Preposterous, pretentious, poorly conceived and poorly acted. SMG should have stuck with Scooby Doo. Talented actress Lauren Adams is buried in this film and Al Franken steals the show. Toback has done much, much better. This movie looks and feels like it was thrown together for a quick buck. And a payday is not likely - exhibitors won't touch it and it will be out on VHS before it hits your local cineplex (if ever).

Eliza T. gave it a 10:
THIS movie I think, it's really COOL, we teenagers love these kinds of movies!!!

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Harvard Man Cowboy Pictures

Harvard Man
Cowboy Pictures