Matthew Broderick is the fledgling NYU student of the film's title, made an offer he can't refuse by an aging Italian padrone bearing an uncanny resemblance to The Godfather's Vito Corleone. Hardly surprising, since the part is played by Marlon Brando, and that's the only real joke in the entire film: Brando's word-perfect parody of his earlier role. Elsewhere the movie is simply writer director Andrew Bergman's third person film school fantasy, with a screenplay only an underclassman could appreciate. It might have been a modern screwball classic except for the slack pacing, lame jokes, annoying voice-over commentary (always a sure sign of lazy writing), and transparent plot twists, including a climax lifted directly from 'The Sting', but with the outcome laboriously spelled out beforehand. Brando himself admitted the film was a piece of garbage, and with good reason. It's almost worth the price of admission to see him carrying his considerable weight so gracefully around an ice skating rink, or hear Bert Parks sing the Miss America theme song to a Komodo Dragon, but otherwise this freshman flunks.
Review of The Freshman
