Movie Review : ‘Honors’: Contrived Lesson for a Student at Harvard

Harvard and the homeless--what a concept! “With Honors” gives us Monty (Brendan Fraser), an industrious political science student who reluctantly befriends Simon (Joe Pesci), a ragamuffin misfit who lives in the boiler room of Harvard’s Widener Library. This is a life-lesson movie where most of the lessons run one-way. Simon’s got all the answers. Monty at first doesn’t even know the questions. By the end he learns to shed his snobbishness and see Simon as a person, not a thing.

This journey-to-wisdom, scripted by playwright William Mastrosimone, is preordained from the first contrivance. Monty loses his entire senior thesis on his computer during a power outage and then loses his one printed copy by accidentally dropping it down a grate and into Simon’s hideaway. Simon, sensing an angle, makes the sputtering student a deal: He will return one page of his 100-page thesis at a time for an equal number of favors.

At first the favors are tiny--like a supply of glazed doughnuts with no cracks in the glaze. Then Monty, exasperated, puts Simon up in the abandoned VW van in the front yard of the house he shares with three other students. Simon gets blankets, food and wine but no entry into the house--at least not until another series of contrivances kicks in.

“With Honors” works best when it’s not trying to clobber us with socially conscious parables about how we should respect our fellow man. We should, of course, but shouldn’t an audience’s intelligence also be respected? There’s a scene where Monty is chewed out by his arch Nobel laureate professor, played by Gore Vidal no less, that really takes the “Paper Chase” cake. Vidal, trying for John Houseman’s plump snootiness, tears into the boy’s notions of democracy until the Harvard-T-shirted Simon, who has accompanied Monty to class, quashes the snob with a ringing endorsement of we-the-people. The theater owners playing this film should hand out copies of the Constitution to patrons as they exit the multiplex.

The college roommate atmosphere, which seemed so phony in the recent “Threesome,” actually seems almost believable in “With Honors,” perhaps because the director Alek Keshishian is a Harvard ’86 grad. He quickly establishes the other roomies: Courtney (Moira Kelley) has a tart, Winona Ryder look and a furtive crush on Monty; Jeff (Josh Hamilton) is a premed student who takes one look at Simon and puts a bolt on his door; Everett (Patrick Dempsey) is a college radio DJ with a pet rooster and a love of vino--he’s the kind of gentle eccentric who blooms on every campus. Their glancing, cantankerous interactions are familiar and funny. They turn to cardboard only when Simon is required to set each one of them on the road to self-betterment.

Brendan Fraser has a strong brooding presence, a hurt quality that at least makes Monty’s attachment to Simon believable. Simon fills in for Monty’s errant father, and Monty takes the place of the son Simon walked out on years before. It’s all terribly schematic, but Fraser and Pesci work well together. Fraser takes some of the nattering edge off of Pesci’s performance. (In “Jimmy Hollywood” there was no such buffer, and Pesci’s performance felt like an assault.) Pesci enjoys playing this ragamuffin sage and some of his enjoyment cuts through the corn.

Not all of it, though. In the end there’s still a large portion of the cornfield left unharvested and flapping in the wind.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for language and brief sensuality . Times guidelines: It includes a few scenes of homelessness that might disturb small children and should disturb adults .

‘With Honors’

Joe Pesci: Simon

Brendan Fraser: Monty

Moira Kelly: Courtney

Patrick Dempsey: Everett

A Warner Bros. release of a Spring Creek production. Director Alek Keshishian. Producers Paula Weinstein, Amy Robinson. Executive producers Jon Peters, Peter Guber. Screenplay by William Mastrosimone. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Editors Michael Miller. Costumes Renne Ehrlich Kalfus. Music Patrick Leonard. Production design Barbara Ling. Set decorator Cricket Rowland. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.