The only notes I wrote during Stealing Harvard were as follows: good until Tom Green. What else can I say? He isn’t funny. What? He put a toothbrush in his mouth that was up someone’s bum?!
Fortunately, ass-toothbrushes weren’t the central theme of this film. Though Green does get a lot of screen time, and despite the fact that he tried his best to make this film unbearable, I didn’t hate it. The film revolves around a central tenet: Jason Lee’s promise to pay for his niece’s education. When the promise was made, it was almost certain he’d never pay a dime; during a spelling bee, she spelled “tarp” incorrectly, and he made the promise to console her. Somehow, his niece gets into Harvard, and is short $29,879. Of course, he has to pay. With the help of his loser friend (Tom Green) he attempts to steal money to pay for the promise. This leads to somewhat retarded situations, and numerous baffling predicaments.
I had a hard time hating this film, because, despite Tom Green’s completely stupid character, everyone else, if not particularly deep or stellar, did fine. Jason Lee pulled off what little there was to pull, while Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally (as his degenerate sister Patty) did what little she could with what little plot there was. I was often forced to break the completely blank look on my face and crack a smile.
But back to Tom Green. The no-brainer story was constantly interrupted by something inane or irrelevant courtesy of Green, and until he calms down at the end, he’s most unwelcome.
Also, a dog humping Tom Green’s leg, no matter how enthusiastically, isn’t funny. I thought my dog humping our bean bag in the basement was funny, but I was 10 years old.
Green was very replaceable. Someone who doesn’t rely on shock tactics would have fared just as well, if not infinitely better, and spared us the pain of watching Green pretend he’s funny. If you’ve seen everything else, you might like this passable exercise in mediocrity.
It isn’t completely horrible, and it will certainly kick your brain down a few notches after a long, hard day of whatever sort of really hard thinking you do.
