''Harvard Man'' is a 2001 American

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...

written and directed by

James Toback James Toback (; born November 23, 1944) is an American film director and screenwriter. His screenplay for '' Bugsy'' won the 1991 Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best screenplay of the year and was nominated for both the Academy Aw ...

, and starring

Adrian Grenier Adrian Sean Grenier (born July 10, 1976) is an American actor, producer, director and musician. He is best known for his portrayal of Vincent Chase in the television series ''Entourage (American TV series), Entourage'' (2004–2011). He has appe ...

Sarah Michelle Gellar Sarah Michelle Prinze ( ; born April 14, 1977) is an American actress. After being spotted at the age of four in New York City, she made her screen acting debut in the television film ''An Invasion of Privacy'' (1983). A leading role on the te ...

Joey Lauren Adams Joey Lauren Adams (born January 9, 1968) is an American actress and director. Adams starred in ''Chasing Amy'', for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and played smaller role ...

Rebecca Gayheart Rebecca Gayheart (born August 12, 1971) is an American actress and model. She began her career as a teen model in the 1980s and subsequently appeared in a student short film by Brett Ratner, with whom she had an extensive relationship. In the ea ...

Ray Allen Walter Ray Allen Jr. (born July 20, 1975) is an American former professional basketball player. He played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in ...

, and

Eric Stoltz Eric Cameron Stoltz (born September 30, 1961) is an American actor, director and producer. He played the role of Rocky Dennis in the biographical drama film ''Mask'', which earned him the nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Support ...

Plot

The story concerns

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

student Alan Jensen, the

point guard The point guard (PG), also called the one or the point, is one of the five Basketball positions, positions in a regulation basketball game. A point guard has perhaps the most specialized role of any position. Point guards are expected to run t ...

of the Harvard basketball team. When his parents' house is destroyed by a

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

, Alan is desperate for $100,000 to replace their home. He is approached by his girlfriend Cindy Bandolini, whose father is an

organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...

boss. Cindy convinces Alan to throw a game for the money. She tells Alan that her father is behind the deal, but actually she goes to her father's associate, Teddy Carter, and Carter's assistant, Kelly Morgan for funding. What she does not know is that Carter and Morgan are undercover FBI agents. Alan throws the game, gives his parents the money, and then undergoes a

psychedelic experience A psychedelic experience (known colloquially as a trip) is a temporary altered state of consciousness induced by the consumption of a psychedelic substance (most commonly LSD, mescaline, psilocybin mushrooms, or DMT). For example, an acid tr ...

after he ingests a big dose of

LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...

, 15,000 micrograms. There follows a long stretch of the film during which morphing special effects demonstrate Alan's altered state as he is pursued by Carter, while Cindy is collared by Morgan. Just when it looks like a toss-up as to what will prove his downfall first, the

bad trip A bad trip (also known as challenging experiences, acute intoxication from hallucinogens, psychedelic crisis, or emergence phenomenon) is an acute adverse psychological reaction to classic hallucinogens. With proper screening, preparation, and su ...

, the FBI, or the mob, Alan's other girlfriend (who is also his philosophy lecturer), Chesney Cort, saves the day. Not only does she get Alan to a doctor who can bring him back to sobriety, she reveals that she is in a sexual threesome with Carter and Morgan. Once he gets some photographic evidence for blackmail, Alan is extricated from his problems. The ending implies that he may have

hallucinogen persisting perception disorder Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a non-psychotic disorder in which a person experiences apparent lasting or persistent visual hallucinations or perceptual distortions after a previous use of drugs, including but not limited t ...

(a chronic disorder in which a person has flashbacks of visual hallucinations or distortions experienced during a previous hallucinogenic drug experience) this is also known as having acid (LSD) flashbacks. While taking a picture of a boy in the park the boy's face morphs and Alan hears echoes of past conversations when Sandy said "Sometimes it never ends". The little boy consoles Alan telling him "everything's okay". He responds "I hope you're right". A close up is shown of his eyes dilated.

Cast

as Cindy Bandolini *

as Alan Jensen *

as Chesney Cort *

as Teddy Carter *

as Kelly Morgan *

Gianni Russo Gianni Vito Russo is an American actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Carlo Rizzi in the 1972 film ''The Godfather''. Life and career Russo was born in Manhattan in 1943 and raised in Little Italy and Staten Island. After reprisi ...

as Andrew Bandolini *

as Marcus Blake * Michael Aparo as Russell * Scottie Epstein as Mario * John Neville as Dr. Reese *

Polly Shannon Polly Shannon (born September 1, 1973) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Margaret Trudeau in the 2002 miniseries '' Trudeau'', a film about the late Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau. Biography Polly Shannon was ...

as Juliet * Phillip Jarrett as Coach Preston *

Al Franken Alan Stuart Franken (born May 21, 1951) is an American comedian, politician, media personality, and author who served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. He gained fame as a writer and performer on the television comed ...

as himself

Release

''Harvard Man'' had only a

limited theatrical release __FORCETOC__ Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...

in July 2002, and received little critical or popular acclaim, although it achieved some success when it was released on

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

in October of that year.

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has a rating of 33%, based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''Harvard Man'' is a pretentious, incoherent mess." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has a score of 49 out of 100, based on 20 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Harvard Man 2001 films 2001 comedy-drama films 2001 independent films 2000s comedy thriller films 2000s crime comedy-drama films 2000s crime thriller films 2000s thriller drama films American basketball films American comedy thriller films American crime comedy-drama films American crime thriller films American independent films American thriller drama films Films about drugs Films about the Federal Bureau of Investigation Films about mental states Films about organized crime in the United States Films directed by James Toback Films set in Boston Films set in Harvard University Films shot in Boston Films shot in Toronto The Kushner-Locke Company films Films scored by Ryan Shore 2000s English-language films 2000s American films