Dead Man on Campus (1998)

Some people eat bugs. Ughhh!
At a point in my high school life not too long ago, I decided to basically watch every high school/college movie I had not yet seen in hopes to find a few I could enjoy to go alongside classics like ANIMAL HOUSE and the closest we have come recently to that film, AMERICAN PIE, ROAD TRIP, and OLD SCHOOL (though none can compare, obviously). Anyway, DEAD MAN ON CAMPUS was an intriguing film, as when I watched it I laughed out loud a few times, chuckled and smiled a lot, and then returned it to its Blockbuster rental home. Soon after, the more I thought about it, the more I was surprised I really enjoyed it. It became a movie I didn't want to spend the money on to buy, but I wanted it as a gift. Finally this Christmas I got it, and upon watching it again, still enjoy it. Yes, it is often (okay, constantly) stupid humor, but the concept is so funny that you would REALLY have to try to mess this up to make it not work. The film also creates 2 likable characters, something teen movies have a hard time doing a lot of times.
Anyway, the story concerns Josh (Tom Everett Scott), a 'got all As in high school' kind of guy with a 6-year med school plan at the prestigious Daleman university. Then he meets his new roommate Cooper (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, of SAVED BY THE BELL fame and with black hair, most likely to mock his blond hair from the show), a slacker stoner who is there merely because his dad owns one of the top toilet cleaning companies. Cooper and Josh strike up a friendship, however, as Cooper makes Josh meet a girl and ultimately fall behind on his studies. From there the main story starts: Josh and Cooper both fail their midterms, and Josh discovers that he needs all B+ or higher grades to keep his scholarship, while Cooper's father threatens to quit paying for his schooling and make him scrub toilets if he doesn't clean himself up. Therefore, Josh would need a series of A+++ grades, and Cooper would have to (gulp) STUDY. They find another solution, however: if your roommate kills himself, you get straight A's. Josh and Cooper don't want one another dead, and their hot-tempered Catholic school result of a roommate (a pre-FREAKS & GEEKS Jason Segel, who hooks up with Linda Cardellini, but I digress) has been staying elsewhere, so the two decide to find the most suicidal guy on campus and drive him to take his life. I guess this is where a lot of critics roll their eyes. "These two nice guys would never try to convince someone to commit suicide," they say, puffing on their snooty pipes. Well, if you're desperate to get your life back on track, I've seen dramas where people do crazier things. And besides, they were suicidal BEFORE, so Josh and Cooper are just helping him along.
Whatever. You already know how this ends up, as this is a comedy (one way or another, Cooper will become a better person, Josh will learn to lighten up and have fun sometimes, and only a few bodies will hit the floor). It's hard to give this movie a good review because the material could have been used in a much more clever, mature way (i.e. make the film smart and witty, not dumb, why-am-I-laughing at this), but that's why comedy is such a wide-open spectrum. I can enjoy dumb and smart comedy equally, and it certainly takes smart guys to make funny dumb comedy (Mike White was a co-writer of this film after all).

Funny Film !
The first time I seen this film I could not stop laughing it's a great film with great characters and a great story line. It is the character of Cliff which makes this film so good really this film is totally underrated and should have been much more popular than it was however it is good to own on DVD.

Funny Film !
The first time I seen this film I could not stop laughing it's a great film with great characters and a great story line. It is the character of Cliff which makes this film so good really this film is totally underrated and should have been much more popular than it was however it is good to own on DVD.