Freshman (review)

Hart Fox wants nothing more than to go to prestigious Stutts University, but he knows they only choose one person from his high school each year. When Burlington Darling, entrepreneur, gubernatorial candidate, and mafioso wannabe, buys the spot for his wastrel son, Trip, he tries to get Hart to go to Stutts as Trip's shadow, taking Trip's classes for him and making sure he doesn't get into too much trouble. Hart agrees only if Darling gets him enrolled as an actual student and pays his tuition. Even on such precarious terms, Hart is enamored with everything about Stutts, from its kooky, antiquated traditions to its flaky professors and even quirkier students. He falls in love with a cute vampire (really) and joins the staff of the humor magazine. His small but efficient cadre of friends helps him to survive a fatwa imposed by Burlington Darling once his services are no longer necessary and to find a way to pay his own tuition so that he can stay at Stutts. That's the plot, but mayhem and hijinks are the story in this parody that blends Animal House antics with tony Jeeves and Wooster sensibilities. The sometimes bawdy, sometimes sophisticated comedy takes on the absurdities of the very rich and their pretentious traditions with sunny alacrity and an acerbic bite. Much of the comedy depends on experience that high school students will not have acquired, but there is enough locker room and crypt humor to keep them interested, and Hart is a lovable ingénu capable of carrying them over the denser bits. The real audience for this is the twenty-something crowd, either in the midst of or just over their own college daze—for them the guffaws are loud, constant, and gut-shaking as Gerber delivers his over-the-top send-up of the freaks, geeks, and other creatures of the night that thrive on or around college campuses.