Amazon.com Essentials:
Wes Anderson's follow-up to the quirky Bottle Rocket is a
wonderfully unorthodox coming-of-age story that ranks with Harold and Maude and
The Graduate in the pantheon of timeless cult classics. Jason
Schwartzman (son of Talia Shire and nephew of Francis Coppola) stars as Max
Fischer, a 15-year-old attending the prestigious Rushmore Academy on
scholarship, where he's failing all of his classes but is the superstar of
the school's extracurricular activities (head of the drama club, the
beekeeper club, the fencing club...). Possessing boundless confidence and
chutzpah, as well as an aura of authority he seems to have been born with, Max
finds two unlikely soulmates in his permutations at Rushmore: industrial
magnate and Rushmore alumnus Herman Blume (Bill Murray) and first-grade
teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). His alliance with Blume and crush
on Miss Cross, however, are thrown out of kilter by his expulsion from
Rushmore, and a budding romance between the two adults that threatens Max's
own designs on the lovely schoolteacher.
Never stooping to sentimentality or schmaltz, Anderson and cowriter Owen
Wilson have fashioned a wickedly intelligent and wildly funny tale of young
adulthood that hits all the right notes in its mix of melancholy and
optimism. As played by Schwartzman, Max is both immediately endearing and
ferociously irritating: smarter than all the adults around him, with little
sense of his shortcomings, he's an unstoppable dynamo who commands grudging
respect despite his outlandish projects (including a school play about
Vietnam). Murray, as the tycoon who determinedly wages war with Max for
the affections of Miss Cross, is a revelation of middle-aged resignation.
Disgusted with his family, his life, and himself, he's turned around by both
Max's antagonism and Miss Cross's love. Williams is equally affecting as
the teacher who still carries a torch for her dead husband, and the superb
supporting cast also includes Seymour Cassel as Max's barber father, Brian
Cox as the frustrated headmaster of Rushmore, and a hilarious Mason Gamble
as Max's young charge. Put this one on your shelf of modern masterpieces.
--Mark Englehart
