Review of Tenure (2010) by Brian S — 12 Jul 2013

Tenure isn't a great movie, but it has heart. Witness how the bearded David Kochner (the Office's obnoxious Todd Packard) is almost unrecognizable as the (relatively) mellowed anthropology teacher genuinely convinced of the existence of bigfoot. Koechner's obsession may seem like a liability in a film set in reality, but it turns into an effective running joke. When two of Kochner's graduate students find a fresh yeti footprint but are unable to take a proper cast before it is destroyed by rainfall, he warns them that West-Coast skeptics will claim it was a hoax. He then effectively mentors them through their comedically perfect outrage and grief.

Likewise, Luke Wilson as (assistant) professor Charlie Thurber quickly abandons his sinister plan to dis-credit his new competition in the Clark College literature department, and instead help her adjust and get comfortable in the classroom--even as a well-meaning Koechner sabotages her in torturously small ways.

The film borders on the dramedy with scenes of Charlie's father, a former Princeton professor (with tenure!), now a widower struggling with alternating mental sharpness and senility. Bob Gunton is good even as his character seems to lack a moral center, sometimes prodding his son for his underachievement, but then moving quickly toward an inevitable but less cathartic than might have been reconciliation as he assures Luke that his teaching ability sets him apart.

The movie works because the characters never go to cheap lengths to make us laugh, or end up caught up in elaborate lies that spiral out of control and require unrewarding scenes of strife as they attempt to get back on track. They work because the characters give each other the benefit of the doubt and don't spend much time shouting or acting in ways that disqualify them for friendship in the first place.

So I'd say it is worth a chance.