The Freshman

Directed by Andrew Bergman, The Freshman follows Matthew Broderick’s Clark Kellogg as he agrees to become an errand boy for a local mobster named Carmine Sabatini (Marlon Brando). It’s a decidedly (and unabashedly) off-kilter premise that’s employed to watchable yet somewhat lackluster effect by Bergman, as the filmmaker, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a subdued and often needlessly deliberate comedy that contains little in the way of actual laughs – with the less-than-hilarious atmosphere, at least, offset by the continuously engaging performances. (Brando and Broderick are good here, of course, although it’s clear that the movie benefits from the efforts of such scene-stealing periphery players as Bruno Kirby, Paul Benedict, and Frank Whaley.) And while the picture is fairly affable within its first half, The Freshman segues into a midsection and final stretch focused almost entirely on the ongoing efforts to procure (and eventually save) an endangered amphibian – with the lackluster bent of this stretch paving the way for a rather anticlimactic finish that’s hardly as satisfying as Bergman has surely intended. Still, The Freshman generally comes off as an amiable-enough endeavor that’s elevated by the novelty of Brando’s goofy, Godfather-inspired turn.

**1/2 out of ****