Rushmore

His grades are so poor he risks being thrown out of school, but precocious 15-year-old Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) isn’t about to let an academic performance cramp his career at Rushmore Academy. He’s editor of the student paper, president of the chess, astronomy, German and French clubs, captain of the fencing and debate teams, and the creative force of the Max Fischer Players. Then there’s his unreciprocated passion for Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), the new first grade teacher. With the help of his industrialist friend Mr Blume (Murray), Max reckons he can win her heart by constructing an aquarium on the school baseball field.

Anderson’s oddball second feature picked up rave reviews and remains one of his touchstone pictures. Even by his own standards, this is a peculiarly poignant comedy, with an outstanding character turn from Bill Murray as… a depressed middle-aged man obsessed with a 15-year-old boy? Granted, Max is 15 going on 50. With his beret, braces and blazer, he’s part Ferris Bueller, part Jay Gatsby. And yet it’s Blume, the first of Anderson’s lost father figures, who gives the movie it’s gravity — and this movie was central to Bill Murray’s late career resurgence.

Line for line this is as witty as any Anderson movie, and the lopsided love triangle at its heart makes this one of his most emotionally accessible films.

Staff Pick: Sean

This tender coming-of-age tale gave the director his most enduring (and endearing) onscreen alter ego in Max Fischer, a bright, brashly big-thinking and socially inept high school misfit negotiating an awkward first crush on a kindly schoolteacher. Max’s own overreaching school plays speak to Anderson’s own soaring creative ambition, though it found its perfect scale in this sophomore jump.

Guy Lodge, Variety

One of the happiest moments of my moviegoing life…. Mock-sophisticated and actually sophisticated, pretentious and unpretentious, arch but sincere — this impossible balance of snobbery, warmth, and pseudo-adolescent craftsmanship… When it was over, I just kept saying, Yes, yes, yes.

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

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