An NYC film student takes a job working for a local
​mobster, and is surprised when things get way out of hand.

COMEDY/CRIME

The Freshman (1990)

Written and Directed by Andrew Bergman

Starring Marlon Brando, Matthew Broderick, Bruno Kirby,
​Penelope Ann Miller, Frank Whaley, Jon Polito, Paul Benedict, Richard Gant, Maximilian Schell, Kenneth Welsh

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Connor Eyzaguirre

July 17, 2019

6/10

The simple fact that Marlon Brando even agreed to do this movie in the first place is a cinematic miracle. I think we should all appreciate that he was willing to make fun of himself and his most famous performance. However, apart from Brando's tongue-in-cheek Don Corleone parody, The Freshman is a disappointingly tame movie that never goes in the directions you want a concept like this to go in. It plays it too safe, and everything ends up way too tidy. Matthew Broderick does a decent job of playing a student in over his head, and the supporting cast has a bearable amount of character actors like Jon Polito, Frank Whaley, and Maximilian Schell. My biggest problem is that the film never knows what it wants to be.

Broderick plays Clark Kellogg, a freshman at New York University who gets robbed his first day in town by a streetwise hustler named Vic (Bruno Kirby). When he tracks Vic down, Vic offers him a job by way of apology. He introduces Clark to Carmine Sabitini (Brando), a local "businessman" with an uncanny resemblance to a certain cinematic godfather. Through Carmine, Clark ends up a bona fide member of the mafia and tries to get out, only to find that Carmine loves him too much for him to leave. It's a great set-up that suffers from poor execution. It's unclear just what Andrew Bergman wanted to do here. For starters, a PG rating was the wrong call. It holds the film back big time, and makes it feel like a Nickelodeon production of The Godfather.

I did enjoy the characters, particularly Brando's Carmine Sabitini. He was like Vito Corleone if he went straight. His chemistry with Broderick kept the film from completely falling apart, but there were so many moments I kept waiting for that never happened. It's a nifty little palate cleanser after a Godfather marathon, but apart from that, there's not a lot of substance here. And perhaps most disappointing, it's not really that funny.