Brando skates! Maximillian Schell sings! Brando kisses Broderick! Bert Parks croons Dylan!
And most amazingly of all, no wildlife, or actors, were actually harmed in the making of “The Freshman,” an old-fashioned PG-rated romp from 1990. Well, maybe the writer-director took a few knocks. He was working with Marlon Brando after all.
But Andrew Bergman convinced the Greatest Method Actor of Them All to send up one of his greatest performances in this lighthearted comedy. Casting Matthew Broderick opposite Brando made the headlines too easy.
‘”Ferris Bueller’ meets his match in ‘The Godfather.”‘
It was cute when it came out, giving fans a chance to savor Brando turning on the charm, with a playful hint of menace, and teen idol of the era Broderick the chance to hold his own with The Great One. But the passing of the years have this classic aging like a bottle of fine Sangiovese. The performances are pitch-perfect. The novelty of seeing and hearing legends having a lark still tickles.
And for a film buff, “The Freshman” is an embarassment of riches — the way it references classic films, leans into “The Godfather” and ridicules the most famous film school of them all (NYU), a film that celebrates notorious New York “types” and skewers of the destructiveness of the superrich as it does.
Broderick plays a posh Putney School grad from Vermont who railroads into New York to attend NYU. Clark Kellogg is smart and polished, disconnected from the nature-fanatic stepfather (Kenneth Welsh) financing this indulgence. But he’s no street-smart Ferris Bueller rebel.
He tries his damnedest to not get hustled on his way to the subway in Grand Central Station. But the not-quite-wiseguy with the unctuous patter and horrific short sleeved sportscoat (Bruno Kirby at his most weasely) takes him in. And takes off with his luggage.
Paul Benedict, another bit of on-the-nose casting, plays the narcissistic professor/advisor who has memorized lines and performances to all the films he teaches, obsesses about and publishes books on, which he forces his students to buy and memorize “the Fleeber” way. “Guns and Provolone” is his take on “The Godfather.” The professor has no interest in young Clark’s problems. Until the kid gets mixed up with the mobster mockingly nicknamed “Jimmy the Toucan.”
Because Clark spies and chases down the hapless Vic (Kirby), with Vic fast-talking his way out of stealing the kid’s money by pitching him a job with “my uncle,” an “importer/exporter” named Carmine Sabbatini.
A running gag begins, “the resemblance” of the hulking, imperious and mysterious Mr. Sabatini to “The Godfather.” That repeated joke joins every New Yorker’s amusing refusal to acknowledge where Clark is from — “Montana,” “Kansas,” Vermont — “Same difference.” — Vic’s pointless efforts to translate snippets of New York Italian that season the dialogue of everybody in this corner of Little Italy and later Carmine’s evasiveness about what he does for a living and what he wants Clark to do for him, which Clark questions constantly.
You’re sure this pick-up and delivery from the airport business is on the up and up? “Promise?”
“Every word I say, by definition, is a promise.”
As the kid and his film nerd roomie (Frank Whaley) find themselves in over their heads, wrestling a rare Komodo Dragon into a mafia Cadillac — and losing it, briefly, hilariously and chaotically, in a mall — they have to wonder just what they’ve gotten themselves into.
Penelope Ann Miller plays Carmine’s smart, winsome but reconciled-with-dad’s-work daughter, Tina. Like Daddy, what Tina wants, Tina gets. Daddy wanted “The Mona Lisa.” The REAL one. Tina wants Clark.
Maximillian Schell vamps the hell out of the role of chef at Carmine’s “Gourmet Club.” BD Wong vamps up his turn as chef’s assistant.
Younger viewers may have no idea who the band singer is in the film’s Gourmet Club finale. But anybody old enough to remember Miss America Pageant emcee Bert Parks, famed for singing “There she is, Miss America,” can’t help but giggle at Bert bopping through “Tequila,” sending up “There She Is” and leaping feet-first into Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.”
And Jon Polito and Richard Gant are the fanatical Feds who want to turn the screws on Clark to get to Carmine and this whole shady “import” endangered species business he’s in.
Film buffs will find “Godfather” connections and classic film jokes scattered throughout “The Freshman.”
But some critics, then and now, thought or think that Brando wearing a mustache, tuxes, even a sweater and hat resembling those he wore in “The Godfather,” lit from above to hide his eyes to double down on the parody, was and is “lazy,” that he wasn’t giving us much in this performance.
They’re wrong. There’s a playfulness and an engagement here that wasn’t something Brando showed often. He’s in delightful form, giving the best and lightest performance of his later career — topping “Don Juan de Marco” and his impish supporting turn in “The Score.”
Yes, he was problematic as a performer and a person. But here it’s as if he finished filming “Guys and Dolls” in the ’50s and devoted himself to a whole other career — an understated comedian wholly in control of his gifts, wholly willing to mock the heck out of his reputation and his most celebrated “comeback” role.
There’s a grandness to him that reminded me of Dianne Weist’s far broader turn in “Bullets Over Broadway.” Bergman, who scripted “The In-Laws,” and whose best film as writer-director was the feather-light rom-com “It Could Happen to You,” handled Brando well and challenged him (ice skating) in ways that should have delighted the “difficult” star, but which Brando would never admit.
“The Freshman” invites us to let Brando surprise us one more time, laugh at the serious Oscar winner (and former Brando co-star) Schell, and appreciate the Golden Age of Matthew Broderick.
Watch his attention to Brando, his reactions to his mercurial co-star’s tricks and surprises (walnuts). And savor just how good and confident of his skills this “kid” was, pretty much from the very start of his career, a teen phenom holding his own with The Greatest in a comedy that’s wearing its years with the effortless ease it summoned up the day it opened.
Rating: PG
Cast: Marlon Brando, Matthew Broderick, Penelope Ann Miller, Bruno Kirby, Paul Benedict, Jon Polito, Richard Gant, Frank Whaley, BD Wong and Maximillian Schell.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Andrew Bergman. A Tristar release on Cinevault, Amazon, other streamers.
Running time: 1:42
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