The Freshman

I've got several movies from Marlon Brando's time as TCM's Star of the Month to get through before they expire from YouTube TV's cloud DVR. Up next is one of Brando's later movies, The Freshman.

Brando may be top billed, but the real male lead is played by Matthew Broderick. He plays Clark Kellogg, a young man from Vermont who, having just finished high school, is set to go off to college at NYU's film school, in the big city. It's also partly to get away from his stepfather, who's a fairly extreme animal rights activist. Now, having such a stepfather, and a late biological father who was a professor at a tony private school, you'd think that Clark would have spent at least weekends in a big city like Boston. But no; Clark is presented as more hopelessly naïve than even characters in 1930s movies.

When Clark arrives at Grand Central Station, looking for the subway, he's approached by a guy who seems like an obvious scam artist, a man named Vic (Bruno Kirby) who claims to be a private livery driver. Yeah, right. But Clark is so stupid that he thinks he putting one over on Vic by negotiating a much lower price on the taxi ride. Unsurprisingly, when Clark steps out of the car to take his stuff out of the trunk, Vic speeds off, leaving Clark with no belongings and even no cash, not having carried the cash on his person, go figure.

The next day, Clark is talking to his film studies professor, Prof. Fleeber (Paul Benedict), about his inability to pay for the expensive books (mostly written by Fleeber himself) that Fleeber wants his students to buy in what is one of the big scams of college. As Clark is in that conversation, he looks out the window, and what does he see? Why, it's Vic, walking across the NYU campus! So Clark jumps out the window and starts chasing Vic, eventually catching up with Vic at the entrance to Vic's apartment building. Now, Vic doesn't have Clark's money any longer, or so he claims. Instead, he claims to know somebody who can help him get a good job, down at a "social club" on Hester Street.

Clark goes to that social club and is admitted on Vic's recommendation. There, he's introduced to Carmine Sabatini (Marlon Brando), who looks surprisingly like Vito Corleone from The Godfather which is of course no surprise since that was a Marlon Brando character as well. Carmine does indeed have a job for Clark, and once again it's another thing that should seem too good to be true because, well, it is. Carmine wants Clark to take his Cadillac, drive to one of the airports to pick up some cargo, and transport that cargo over to New Jersey. Depending on traffic, it's a couple of hours, but for doing all that Clark can pick up a cool $500, which was nice even in 1990.

Alarm bells should be going off, but Clark brings his roommate along. The cargo in question is a live Komodo dragon, not caged. It's an endangered species (although not quite as endangered as the movie posits), so bringing one into the country is highly regulated, and bringing one into the country like this certainly must be illegal. But Clark is well past the point of no return, so he takes it to the destination, what seems like a farm owned by Larry London (Maximilian Schell), a seeming collector of exotic animals and a lover of gourmet food.

Clark calls his mother back in Vermont to talk about what's going on, and his stepfather is eavesdropping on the conversation. Stepdad, being an animal rights activist, immediately responds by calling the feds since there's definitely crimes being committed, and they send two men to investigate and eventually try to arrest Clark, using him to go after the much bigger prey in Carmine.

Now, The Freshman is a lot of fun, although it's not realistic at all. Then again, it's a comedy, and a lot of it isn't meant to be realistic, instead giving cast members an opportunity to play overbroad stereotypical roles such as Brando doing his Godfather shtick or Paul Benedict as the college professor. And, I suppose, Matthew Broderick as the ultimate hick even if hicks aren't liable to go to film school. Surprisingly, all of it works. The Freshman is definitely worth seeing if you haven't seen it before.