
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 30, 1994                   TAG: 9405020155
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

'HONORS' TRIES TO BE TOO MUCH|

"With Honors" is a simplistic, sentimental film with two important lessons for viewers: Political correctness has its merits, but it doesn't lend itself to interesting (or funny) filmmaking; and music video directors aren't necessarily good filmmakers.

Director Alek Keshishian owed much of the success of his documentary film "Truth or Dare," which followed Madonna's 1990 Blond Ambition Tour, to Madonna herself. She is so strange and powerful and pathetic his camera could hardly be led astray.

In "With Honors," which seems to want to tell us something about the dignity of the homeless - while flatly stereotyping them - Keshishian got lost in that strange place that seems to swallow up so many directors these days: The Land of Wanting to Be All Things to All Viewers.

Here's the problem: There's this Harvard political science major named Monty (Brendan Fraser), so wrapped up in writing his thesis that when he suffers hard-disk failure (gasp!), it's like, no it is the end of the world. He's lost his 10 chapters, so it's out to Kinko's he must go to make copies of his printouts, with Future Love Interest and roommate Courtney (Moira Kelly) chasing him like a puppy dog.

The precious chapters end up falling through a grate into the boiler room of the Harvard library, where they come into the possession of Simon Wilder, played by Joe Pesci. Homeless person Wilder wants food and clean underwear in exchange for the return of each page, and a tiresome, sometimes excruciatingly predictable Odd Couple thing ensues.

Of course Simon is a sage. And Monty is really a nice guy, who just misses the father who abandoned him, but he's spent too much time with his nose in a book. And Monty's roommates are all really cool (Generation Xers are supposed to eat up the super-hip roommate repartee), and even Jeff the Nerd (Josh Hamilton) ends up being OK.

Everyone learns Something Important - even the students in the political science class of cynical Professor Pitkannan (Gore Vidal), where Simon delivers a brilliant, unrehearsed speech on the true beauty of the Constitution. As Simon departs, you can almost see it in the eyes of Pitkannan's students: "Homeless people are so cool."

When it's not preaching, the movie is trying - in vain - to make us laugh. Pesci is not a comic actor, nor is anyone else in this cast, except maybe Patrick Dempsey. And when it ventures into serious, dramatic territory, it is leaden and, well, beware of movies that end with a big "group hug."

With Honors **

Warner Bros. release playing at Tanglewood Mall;107 min. Rated PG-13 for profanity and butt shot.

by CNB