Review of Stealing Harvard (2002) by Jordan K — 03 Dec 2015

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy some aspects of Stealing Harvard. The overall premise wasn't bad (I'll get back to that) and I enjoyed Jason Lee's performance but some of the comedy felt flat and - ugh - damn you, Tom Green!

Average joe John regrets a promise he made years before to his niece that he would pay for her college tuition - he finds himself in between a rock and a hard place when she gets into Harvard, John and his awkward buddy Duff resorting to crime to get $30,000 all whilst John tackles money spent on a dream house, the cops, and his boss/father in law growing more suspicious of his actions.

Stealing Harvard is far from great but honestly isn't terrible. Sure, the acting kinda sucks, with the exception of Jason Lee, who captures the averageness of his character decently. Tom Green is the elephant in the room. His character, aside from his typically terrible performance, is awkward and unfunny, typically making most decent scenes ruined with idiotic dialogue. His character's schtick isn't even clearly stated - it's a cross between nerdy and awkwardly weird. John C. McGinley's character as a tough as nails(ish) cop is a mystery, as well. The film wants to, at times, make his character a main antagonist but can't make its mind up on using John's father in law or McGinley's character, who enters the film way too late to even be a major character. The story is decent but many opportunities could have strung from it and the same overall premise with a different setting outside of a college atmosphere has been done to death before. The comedy can be overall flat and a little immature but isn't anything too terrible, unless it's Green or McGinley. Stealing Harvard gets a bad wrap - it's far from great but it's not awful. It's dumb and some areas are noticably bad, but there are far worse comedies (especially in Green's resumà (C)) than Stealing Harvard.