The Freshman

Marvelous supporting performances from scene-stealing Kirby, Maximilian Schell, Paul Benedict as the nutty professor and Frank Whaley as Broderick's quiff-coiffed room mate pile on the pleasures, but the sight of Marlon Brando on ice skates is surely the absolute treat in a film well worth rooting for. Read full review

The Freshman is the smartest and most slyly amusing American farce in years. Read full review

Sweet and warm as well as manic, this is full of loopy surprises, and the supporting cast (including Penelope Ann Miller, Bruno Kirby, Steve Bushak, Maximilian Schell, and Bert Parks, playing himself in his film debut) is uniformly fine. Read full review

When was the last time you were really surprised in a movie? These days, it seems, most movies are homogenized and safely predictable in order to appeal to the widest possible audience without disturbing anyone. Surprise! Here's "The Freshman," a quirky sleeper with something truly unexpected around every corner. Read full review

The visual style of The Freshman isn't always up to its verbal wit, but then the writing sets an exceptional standard. Read full review

Even without Marlon Brando in it, Andrew Bergman`s The Freshman would be a very funny movie; with him, it seems likely to become a classic. Read full review

Andrew Bergman's The Freshman is a charmed comedy, the kind of seemingly effortless movie in which everything falls neatly into place, as if ordained by nature. Read full review

Marlon Brando returns to the movies with one of his funniest performances as, in essence, Don Corleone with a screw loose. Read full review

Welcome to the summer's first pleasant surprise. [20 July 1990, p.1D]

There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts - but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in "The Freshman"? He is doing a reprise here of his most popular character, Don Vito Corleone of "The Godfather," and he does it with such wit, discipline and seriousness that it's not a ripoff and it's not a cheap shot, it's a brilliant comic masterstroke. Read full review

The role is nothing more than an elaborate comic turn, but he invests it with such sly knowingness and reserves of feeling that he gives this dinky joke-book movie a soul. Brando is doing here what a lot of famous actors probably wish they could do to the roles that made them famous (or, in Brando’s case, famous again). He’s using the gravity of his performance in “The Godfather” for comic effect, bringing out the absurdity that was always just under the surface of the role. Read full review

The casting, needless to say, is perfect, and Bergman keeps the various escalating intrigues clipping along at a brisk pace. Read full review

The Freshman is no small thing. Well, actually, it is a small thing. But to a moviegoer deafened by and reeling from the rolling barrage laid down by the early summer's big box-office guns, the determined modesty, the unsprung affability of Andrew Bergman's comedy are precisely what make it treasurable. Read full review

The Freshman has a preposterous plot even the writer's mother couldn't believe, and it strains and creaks down the runway, but when this baby gets off the ground, we're talking seriously funny. Read full review

A well-intentioned but negligible story elevated to the charming through elegant performance and direction. It probably wouldn't work with any other players, but it gets high marks here. [27 July 1990, p.7]

It's fun to watch Marlon Brando parody one of his most justly celebrated roles and to see Bert Parks singing ``Maggie's Farm''; Matthew Broderick gives the comedy extra charm. The action sometimes gets bogged down in silly slapstick, though. Read full review

The Freshman isn't big at all, but it's no bauble, and it's no genre piece. It's quite unhinged, in fact -- the film seems continuously on the verge of spinning off into madness. It never does, which is kind of too bad. But it's never dull, and it's never cute, and it's not at all what Brando thought it was. [27 July 1990, p.G5]

It's no masterpiece. In fact, it's not even all that good. But it has that great character in it -- Falstaff, or in this case, a thinly veiled Vito Corleone -- so it's something to see. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

The Freshman is not the kind of movie where one wonders about plot twists or logic. One enjoys Brando and Broderick, and chuckles at a considerable amount of comedy. [27 July 1990, p.8F]

Not nearly that bad, hardly that good - just an amiable, good-natured, fun-loving flick with moments of low comedy that will be remembered for . . . well, hours, maybe. [20 July 1990]

There's not much to THE FRESHMAN beyond the spectacle of Brando gently spoofing his most famous role, but that's a pretty sizeable asset. Broderick is his usual charming self, and there are occasional moments of inspired whimsy or absurdity: Brando on ice skates, Bert Parks delivering a rousing rendition of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm." Read full review

Pic’s weakest element is the recurring satire of film studies. Although Benedict is droll as an academic poseur, the mocking of film analysis is puerile and obvious. Read full review

With Brando around, The Freshman has a snappy madness that’s hard to resist. Read full review

The Freshman has its moments — I enjoyed Paul Benedict’s performance as a pompously self-infatuated film professor — but mostly it plods along like that lizard. Still, whenever Brando shows up the screen just about twinkles. Read full review

The Freshman, to be fair, offers delights. It's slight, a conceit better written than directed by Alan Bergman, but with flashes of witty satire and moments of screwball charm. [27 July 1990, p.29]

Brando's confusion is understandable. The Freshman is, as he said, a bit of a stinker. But it also contains those moments of high comedy he spoke of. Add Brando's statements together, divide the total by two and you have the right answer about this movie. Read full review

No actor has ever been more contemptuous of his profession -- or the movie business as a whole -- than Brando; to him, acting is nothing, and his performance here shows his self-loathing, his desire to trash himself and his accomplishments. This isn't self-parody, it's self-desecration. Read full review