Education: Boost Your Intelligence

“Most kids grow up with a boogeyman under their beds– mine terrorized Grenwich Village,” Charlie Banks (Jesse Eisenberg) says of Mick Lerry (Jason Ritter). This drama, written by Peter Elkoff, aims to be a collegiate variation of “The Great Gatsby” (characters make two major references to “Gatsby”) with a dash of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” thrown in.

With the exception of charismatic, sexy Ritter/Mick, the rich college characters are neither good nor bad. They are merely boring. Eisenberg as Charlie is worse than boring. Both actor and character grow incessently annoying as the movie goes on. Charlie/Eisenberg is a nerdy, bookish, sulkish, surly, wimp/bore.

Charlie and others witness Mick commit a shockingly violent act at a party. Charlie is the only one who goes to the police but, under pressure and lacking a moral backbone of his own, he later recants his testimony and the case against Mick is dropped. The incident leaves Charlie with a minor psychological bruise and he soon settles into a comfortable Ivy League existence. Three years later, Mick appears out of the blue in Charlie’s dorm room. Even Mick’s sudden reappearance doesn’t disrupt Charlie’s life much. Mick doesn’t disrupt; he just “hangs out.” He easily assimilates into campus life. He “audits” classes, but is not a student. Both Charlie and Mick fall in love with Mary (Eva Amurri), but only Mick gets her in bed. These rich kids do what they normally do: party, drink, have sex, etc. and not much else.

Inspiration frequently fails first time director Fred Durst. A major dramatic revelation is handeled in a lazily casual, offhanded manner. When Mick’s violent nature rises to the surface again, Charlie reacts by having a major hissy-fit. When Charlie finally does “man up”, it is much too little and much too late. Mick never comes across as a frightening bully. He’s a sexy, charismatic guy with “anger management issues” who is pratically begging for redemption and forgiveness. Durst’s directorial inexperience shows in the way he stages (and nearly ruins) the dramatic climax. Mick calls Charlie “a cold bitch”, and he’s correct. I just wanted to slap Charlie/Eisenberg senseless.

There are fine supporting performances by Christopher Marquette as Danny and Sebastian Stan as Leo. But it is Jason Ritter’s performance that totally saves the movie. Ritter radiates real star charisma, and a “STAR” is exactly what he deserves to, and should, be. The DVD features Audio Commentary by Durst and Ritter.
Rating: 2 / 5

This is a movie in which nothing of importance happends. It doesn’t really have a real start and an a real end. It is boring and a bit weird.

I guess the movie is about being a teenager and making life altering choices but it does not relay too well the gravity of such choices. Besides, the acting leaves a lot to be desired.

Definetely a rental not a buy.
Rating: 3 / 5

Directorial debut by Limp Bizkit, Fred Durst, is just so bad. Fred would have never thought to play some incredibly complex guitar shredding piece on his first gig in public. Instead, he chose to take on The Great Gatsby a very difficult film / story in capable hands, and fails miserably as a director. This might sound a bit extreme, but sadly Fred should just keep playing the guitar, he overtells his story, over makes his points, and just flat out doesn’t understand film language.

The first clue this film would be a problem – opening black screen, white statement *New York City*. Then cut to a city scene. Then black screen with white type *Late nineteen seventies.* Then we go on to see a bus ride and the first voice over dialog is about how this is Greenwich Village. We then see somebody dressed in bell bottom jeans, hear 1970’s music. This is called beating your audience over the head with a sledge hammer. Either a director is skillful at setting the scene and time period through visuals and dialog; or he has no skill at it and resorts to subtitles warning the audience. Now the worst part of all this, there was no reason why this had to be set in Greenwich Village or New York City; or the late or early 1970’s. None of it mattered.

There was a glaring nasty mistake in the era language. Mick is said to *tag* a wall, and that he beat up somebody that put a *tag* over his. In that era, the word tag was never used to talk about grafitti. It was called grafitti then. Tags happened in the 90’s and 2000’s, not the 70’s.

So Durst has no ability to set the stage for the film, create an era, give a feeling of the period and make that important (he resorts to titles to do that work). He then goes on with sledge hammer after sledge hammer of redundancies. You would think that somebody this talented at music would know how to use music to enhance the film. Instead he bludgeons the viewer to death with impending doom music after the viewer has seen that something wrong is going to happen. The music music, not the sounds trying to telegraph emotions, was excellent. This would be a good soundtrack to purchase.

Jesse Eisenberg – he’s so geeky, he moves as badly as Jeff Goldblum (that means he has no idea how to move on camera), is he Michael Cera, is he Patrick Fudgit? No he’s none of them, but he’s all of them blended together. He sort of blends into the background. Jason Ritter, yes the performance is good. But he looks like Matt LeBlanc’s younger brother, and seems to be Joey Tribiani, only mean. It’s just so hard not to think of him that way. Eva Amuri as the hottsie totsie Mary, did get the early 80’s look solid. She was well cast and delivered a decent performance. Chris Marquette as Danny, Charlie’s best friend, was decent. Sebastian Stan, did a decent job as Leo, the rich kid everyone loves to hate. But his pontificating was just awful most of the time.

If you know the Great Gatsby story, you have the plot line of this film. There’s some roles jumbled around, but in general, it’s the whole Great Gatsby thing. F. Scott Fitzgerald would be upset about this adaptation.

Film wise, there’s a lot wrong here. The film is easily 20 minutes too long (run time of 1 hour 40 minutes). Durst has no idea when to make his point and move on. He lingers too long on almost every plot point. Surround sound was good. Sadly the music was much louder than the dialog. I had to run the movie with subtitles enabled so as not to blow out the neighbors during the musical portions of the movie. This is just plain sad mix. Fortunately, almost all shots are in focus. Cameras are steady, they did not resort to very much hand held random movements.

A solid indicator for me that a film is too long, the 2X fast forward button gets hit. This is just fast enough to get out of most dragging scenes, and the subtitles remain, so the plot can still be followed. I am pretty sure after the first 1/2 hour, this movie got about 15 or 20 moments of 2X fast forwarding (a very high bad number).

The DVD includes a 23 minute yammering conversations behind the making of THe Education of Charlie Banks. It’s the classic same old actor talking about their character, banal description of what you’ve already seen on screen. The only tidbit, apparently the story is based on something that happened to the screenwritter. Aside from that, if you watch the movie, you’ve seen everything they tell you about in this 23 minutes. Well skippable.

The movie is rated R for strong language. There’s a pretty nasty fight scene early on. The sound effects are brutally realistic. Normal Hollywood would have a huge bottle crash and breakage when a person gets hit in the head by a beer bottle. The real sound is probably more like what was in this film, a very loud sharp thud with no breakage. It was gut wrenching to say the least. There is no nudity, well except a scene from the rear where Jason Ritter strips down and jumps in the hot tub (NYPD blue showed more on television). There are a couple of senuous scenes, but it’s all pretty chaste.

I really did not care for this movie. It’s not the topic, it’s not that I don’t understand what was trying to be told; I just appreciate well made film. This one is a very poorly made film by somebody that should stick with his music career. Fred Durst understands the language of music, he does not understand film language.
Rating: 1 / 5