Holden Caulfield Bites Back

by Thomas Burchfield

If you are looking for laughs in the dog days of February, you could do much worse than "Rushmore", a charming and loopy dark comedy opening at Bay Area Theaters.

Co-writer and director Wes Anderson's film tells the story of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzmann), the most fanatical and precocious, but also the worst, most unpopular student at Rushmore Academy, a top flight private school, located in a never-never land somewhere between Texas and Minnesota.

Max, the ferocious go getter we all hated back in high school, is President and/or founder of every single extracurricular organization in the school. As the school's theatre director, he stages his own adaptations of gritty crime tales like "Serpico" (with a student cast playing inner city cops and wiseguys). He is so busy getting everyone's attention, that he is flunking every class, content to fantasize his academic brilliance rather than hit the books.

"Rushmore"'s plot is triggered by Max's unrequited love for Rushmore Kindergarten teacher (and fish lover) Miss Cross (Olivia Williams). No matter that Miss Cross is easily twice his age. What are little matters of age discrepancy to a genius in love? There is no embarrassment Max is unwilling to suffer in his quixotic quest for her heart. What Rushmore Academy thinks is another matter. After Max digs up the school's athletic field to make way for an Aquarium he wishes to build to impress her, Rushmore expels him for the affront. Thrown into the foul pit of public school, Max nevertheless plots his comeback.

Complicating matters further is Herman Blume (Bill Murray), a rich but miserable industrialist and Rushmore alumni, whom Max forces to serve as his mentor and counselor in love . . . until Herman falls for Miss Cross himself, setting off a ruthless tit-for-tat war that brings both of them to near- ruination.

"Rushmore" is a very funny movie, an antic celebration of adolescent genius and eccentricity. Director Wes Anderson, and co-writer Owen Wilson have created their own cockeyed world with its own oddball rules, rich with quirky details (for instance cell phones abound, but no one has a computer). Anderson directs with fine comic detachment and grace and also leavens the proceedings with the right dash of sweetness. Max Fischer is a frightening, dangerous teenager who normally would be put down long before puberty. But the film also draws attention to his loneliness, yearning and decency in his soul. Even at the height of his war with Mr. Blume over Miss Cross, it's apparent he cares for the hapless, lonely millionaire as much as Blume, reluctantly, cares for him. They are bound together by their alienation from the rest of the world.

The cast is uniformly fine, including veteran Seymour Cassell as Max's barber father (whom, as Max informs everyone, is a world famous brain surgeon), and Mason Gamble as Max's only real school chum, Dirk Calloway, (whose mother Max loudly brags to have trysted with). Olivia Williams, as Miss Cross, plays the movie's straightwoman with calm, glowing ease.

Shedding the wiseguy persona he has worn for too many years, Murray is excellent as Herman Blume. Playing a wealthy man bullied by his kids, Murray gets right to Herman's sourpuss soul and easily gains sympathy with his doughy face and sad eyes. It's a performance full of hilarious and winsome charm. When Max calls him his friend, it's a genuinely sweet moment.

"Rushmore"s biggest find is Jason Schwartzmann as Max. Peering laser-like from behind his thick hornrims, the young actor is superb as the deadly single-minded force of nature who never lets stubborn fact interfere, even when staging a full scale version of the Vietnam war in a high school gym (you haven't lived until you've seen high school students play hard bitten grunts) Schwartzmann successfully walks the line between making Max both scary and sympathetic.

The film has its dead spots and unfortunately inserts some irrelevant pop songs throughout (including John Lennon's "Oh, Yoko!" of all things). Mark Mothersbaugh (of the great 1980s band Devo) contributes a quirky comical score that reflects the good feelings that light up this heady little farce.

POSTHOC EMOTICON RATING: :-)

[Thomas Burchfield can be reached at TBDeluxe@aol.com and appears regularly in Swing Time magazine.]

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