Genre

The sophomore effort of Wes Anderson, Rushmore brings together a 15 year old who flunked out of private school, and a steel tycoon in his 40s, and shows the lengths that people go to sometimes to try and win the heart of the one they love.

That would be too easy an effort, wouldn’t it? Well, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman, I Heart Huckabees) is attending Rushmore Academy on scholarship, and he loves Rushmore. So much so, that he creates a club for just about everything that hasn’t had an esta...lished club at Rushmore. Beekeepers’ Society? Check. Model U.N.? Check. He also writes and produces plays at the school. Not your average plays, more along the lines of adaptations. Adaptations which may not be appropriate for younger kids. I mean, why subject an 8 year old to a play that’s adapted from Serpico? The problem with all his extracurriculars is that he neglects his studies, and is threatened with expulsion by the school’s headmaster (Brian Cox, The Rookie). As Max’s father (Seymour Cassel, Stealing Harvard) is only a barber, expulsion would be expulsion, he couldn’t buy his way out of it. Max does find an inspiration, someone that he falls in love with, a 1st grade English teacher named Ms. Cross (Olivia Williams, The Sixth Sense). The problem is that Ms. Cross rejects his flirtations, so he enlists the aid of Herman Blume (Bill Murray, Caddyshack), a self-made tycoon who gains Max’s admiration and respect at a guest speaker engagement at the school, simply telling the poor kids to take the rich kids down. The problem with getting Blume involved is that he eventually falls in love with her also, though he is already unhappily married.