Die Uni meiner Träume

This is an amusing story that highlights that blasted college admissions process. The story follows several soon-to-be high school graduate's plans for the future. For Marlo (Parker), it's going to whatever school his dream girl Jessica (Flynn Boyle) is going to. For Oliver, it's giving into the white line fever and experiencing life Jack Kerouac style with the possibility of meeting "renegade game show hostesses" on the side. But, for most of the students in the movie, it is all about getting into college. We see the whole bit of it, taking the SATs, college recruitment day, college prep programs, and the dreaded admissions interview.

It's quite an amusing exageration of the whole process, and probably more likely so for kids actually going through the college application process. Although, the movie, at least for me, is sometimes funny and sometime not so funny, on the multiple occassions that I have seen it. I like the idea of the living SAT's with the fate of word problem person A and B resting on Marlo's selection of answers. I like the running gag about admitting a pig among the admissions officers. Despite the fact that the actors are too old to play teenagers (except Oliver and Wanda), it is a nice little movie about kids stuck in a nerve wracking situation hoping to just make it through things.

This movie starts off staggeringly well, and I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me for enjoying it so much. Well, after the first twenty minutes, I found that this movie was only average at best, with only the occasional chuckle and a great deal of silliness. Yet, I would still recommend this film, because the beginning is not only hilarious, but it was enough to get me caring about the main characters. The great opening was also important in that it changed my attitude regarding the film. I stopped looking for reasons to hate the movie, and I started looking for positives. Sure, everything progressed predictably, but you don't watch teen comedies expecting a cliffhanger ending. If you are someone who can appreciate brainless entertainment, then this is a good film for you to watch.

Sweet character driven with silliness most of the way through! The jokes were well placed and everything else is genuinely pleasant; classic comedy before they got raunchy/dirty nowadays.

There are a couple of great ideas in this movie. One is its ingenious approach to math problems. The other is a scene in which Jessica, while waiting for her college interview, is forced into the realization that she is considerably less unique than she thought.

The result is a movie with pockets of hilarity broken up by long stretches of vague amusement. This is, for the most part, a cookie-cutter teen comedy that often doesn't even seem to be trying. The premise and every vagary of the plot is stupid and poorly conceived, the lead actors, except for Boyle, give broad, forgettable performances, and one imagines the movie was written in an afternoon on a gum wrapper. It does have a few good moments, but it's not really worth bothering with.

Good light entertainment that never quite passed into the mainstream, despite featuring several performers who later became better-known: Anthony Edwards before he lost his hair and became a famous TV doc, Corey Parker before he became a caricature of himself, and Lara Flynn Boyle before she became a skeleton. A lightweight and quirky farce about the college admissions process, this bit of fluff also has a really nice heart, plus fun performances by Finn Carter as Edwards's true love and Chris Rydell as Parker's ultracool best friend.