Review of With Honors (1994) by Zach G — 06 Jan 2010

Montgomery Kessler and his three friends attend Harvard and live together. Monty has been working on a thesis and then one night his hard drive fails, giving him no choice but to go make copies of what papers he has printed from it. While going to the library he trips and brakes his ankle aswell as dropping the papers into the boiler room of the library. Him and Courtney go into the library and he sneaks down to the boiler room to get the papers where he finds a homeless man throwing it into the fire. The homeless man offers to give him a page by page back after Monty does a deed for him. Monty then calls the cops and has the man go to court and he then pays his bail seeing as only the bum knows where the papers are.

He then takes the bum home and lets him sleep out in the broken down van out front. The bums name is Simon Wilder (Joe Pesci) and he and Monty begin an arrangement for a page for a deed. Monty and his roommates begin to get close to Simon and bring him into the house. Simon turns out to be very intelligent and teaches Monty new things about life. Simon even shows him the rocks he has collected over the years symbolizing the many great memories he has had. Later on after taking him to the hopsital, Monty discovers Simon has asbestosis from his working days and he is in the final stages of it. Simon wishes to go see his son he left behind all those years ago and later that night he dies. His memory lives on through the college students who learn a valuable lesson about life.

This movie was a great movie that has the right blend of comedy and drama. Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser deliver in this modern masterpiece.