Taglines: A comedy about doing the wrong things… for the right reasons.
Nice guy John Plummer (Jason Lee) is engaged to ditsy Elaine Warner (Leslie Mann), and intends to use his life savings of $30,000 to put a down payment on a house because he does not want to accept money from her wealthy father, Mr. Warner (Dennis Farina), who is also John’s employer and who already considers John unworthy of his daughter. Warner also has a mean dog named Rex who hates John and always agrees with his master.
Simultaneously, his niece Noreen (Tammy Blanchard), daughter of John’s “trailer-trash” sister, Patty (Megan Mullally), is accepted to Harvard University, but needs an additional $30,000 on top of her grants and scholarships in order to attend. Noreen shows her uncle John a videotape made many years ago, at which time he promised to pay for Noreen’s college education when the time came if she were to work hard and be accepted to a university. John now has a moral and financial dilemmadisappoint his fiancée and prove her father right by showing that he cannot provide for Elaine, or disappoint his niece, sister, and her friends, who all look up to him, and take away his niece’s only chance to escape from a life of lower-class poverty.
John’s best friend from high school, who was severely picked on and cried all the time, was an eccentric loser landscaper Walter “Duff” Duffy (Tom Green) tells John that one of his rich landscaping clients keeps large amounts of cash in an unlocked safe, and that no one is ever in the home on Sunday nights. Duff convinces John, who is bitterly opposed to the idea, that stealing from the homeowner would be okay, because no one would be hurt and the insurance company, which “deserve to be ripped off”, would reimburse him. John reluctantly agrees, and he and Duff set out to steal the cash, but Duff runs off when lights come on in the home, leaving John staring down the barrel of the homeowner, Honorable Emmett Cook (Richard Jenkins)’s gun.
Rather than being shot or turned over to the police, John instead finds himself forced at gunpoint to cross-dress and role-play the part of Cook’s late wife as the two men lie in bed and “spoon”. Eventually, after taking an incriminating photograph of John, one of many identical photos Cook keeps in an album while explaining to John that he is “not gay, I just miss my wife”, Cook releases him. As he is leaving, Mr. Warner and his dog are riding by, and takes note of John’s panicked behavior, believing that he has caught John in an affair which will be evidence he can use to persuade his daughter to call off the wedding.
Stealing Harvard is a 2002 American criminal comedy film directed by Bruce McCulloch and written by Martin Hynes and Peter Tolan, about a man who resorts to crime to pay for his niece’s Harvard tuition. The film stars Jason Lee and Tom Green with Leslie Mann, Dennis Farina, Richard Jenkins, John C. McGinley, Tammy Blanchard, and Megan Mullally.
Stealing Harvard (2002)
Directed by: Bruce McCulloch
Starring: Jason Lee, Tom Green, Leslie Mann, Dennis Farina, Richard Jenkins, John C. McGinley, Tammy Blanchard, Megan Mullally, Seymour Cassel, Martin Starr, Chris Penn
Screenplay by: Martin Hynes, Peter Tolan
Production Design by: Gregory P. Keen
Cinematography by: Ueli Steiger
Film Editing by: Malcolm Campbell
Costume Design by: Betsy Heimann
Set Decoration by: Leslie Morales
Art Direction by: Steven Schwartz, James E. Tocci
Music by: Christophe Beck
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and drug references.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: September 13, 2002
Visits: 63
