The United States Of Leland Review

by Mark R Leeper (leeper AT mtgbcs DOT mt DOT lucent DOT com)
October 12th, 1998
RUSHMORE (United States)
    A review by Mark R. Leeper in bullet-list form
    from the Toronto Internation Film Festival

    CAPSULE: Max Fischer, 15 years old, seems to have a mind of a 40- year-old business executive who is also a playwright, but he can't pass his classes. This is an amiable ramble through the affairs and personality of a not very believable character. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)

    - Directed by Wes Anderson who directed BOTTLE ROCKET. Made for Touchstone Pictures, though this is clearly not in the style of a Touchstone comedy.
    - Max Fischer (played by Jason Schwartzman) is a superb organizer who talks and acts like and adult three times his age. He founded a dozen different clubs at his school Rushmore Academy and writes plays like a Broadway playwright. The film follows several months of Max's life and his strategies to win an attractive first-grade teacher (Olivia Williams) as a lover and to befriend, then make an enemy of, then again to befriend a local business leader (Bill Murray). That may make the plot sound more coherent than it seemed watching the film. In truth you usually know where the film is, but it is hard to tell where the film is going or to remember where it has been.
    - Example: Max is trying to impress a teacher who likes fish so he hires contractors to construct a building to house an aquarium on the school baseball diamond. He gets eight million dollars for the project from Bill Murray, but he never mentions it to school administrators.
    - Rarely clear what Max's plan is. That could be fun, but it never seems to be.
    - Some of the appeal might be like the appeal of FORREST GUMP. I did not care for that either but Max seems to have the same sort of luck. He is like an intellectual Forrest Gump.
    - Another Luke Wilson film, my third of the festival.

Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper

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