The Freshman

FRESHMAN - DVD Movie

Young Clark Kellog (Matthew Broderick) had no idea film school would drop him into the hands of a real-life Godfather, but after a street punk robs him his first day in New York City, that's just where the road leads. Marlon Brando let everyone know he was in on the joke with his hammy, good-humored performance as the bulldog-jowled Mafioso Carmine Sabatini, the man Clark's prissy, self-important professor swears was the real life inspiration of Don Corleone. Carmine has a modest proposal for the naive kid from Vermont involving Carmine's gorgeous daughter Tina (Penelope Ann Miller) and the illegal importing of an endangered lizard. Andrew Bergman's tongue-in-cheek comedy keeps the spoofing in a low key, underplaying the outrageous situations even as he piles them higher: if the sight of a six-foot-long lizard scattering shoppers as it runs wild through a New York City mall doesn't do it for you, there's always Bert Parks's rousing rendition of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm." --Sean Axmaker