Stealing Harvard

To hear the critics carp, you'd think this was Freddy Got Fingered Again, but it isn't, not by a long shot. Tom Green actually plays a character herein, albeit one that isn't radically different from his established persona. In fact, the whole affair's a weird, low-key comedy from Kids in the Hall alumnus Bruce McCulloch, whose feature directorial debut Dog Park was similarly low-key and offbeat. No one in a McCulloch movie is ever normal -- most of the humor comes from characters saying or doing the weirdest thing you could possibly come up with in any given circumstance, and if that kind of humor's your bag, there's frequently a lot to enjoy in the bizarre antics of Green and Jason Lee, as they wrangle one moronic high-concept scheme after another to try to get the money for Lee's niece to attend Harvard (the film was originally and more alliteratively entitled Stealing Stanford, but Stanford would have nothing to do with it. Their loss). Leslie Mann and John C. McGinley acquit themselves well in supporting roles.