'Stealing Harvard' Opening A Flop

Stealing Harvard was released on Friday—Registration Day for the College. But the similarities and Harvard tie-ins end there.

The movie features Jason Lee as John Plummer, a well-meaning uncle who promised his niece, Noreen, that he would pay for college once she was admitted. Noreen, played by Tammy Blanchard, lives in a trailer park with her unemployed mother.

In an attempt to make ends meet, Noreen holds a string of jobs that include carrying cattle carcasses in a meat packing plant—when the tuition bill from Harvard arrives, however, she finds herself still short. Within a month, she must raise $29,879 in order to enroll.

In the film, Plummer turns to his best friend Duff, played by Tom Green, for plans that are “so dumb they are brilliant” to raise the large amount needed to keep his promise to his niece—mostly gross-out slapstick comedic schemes with little financial reward.

Stealing Harvard is the most recent in a string of movies vaguely tying in to Harvard, including Legally Blonde, How High and Harvard Man.

The University allows books and movies to use its name in the belief that audiences can distinguish between the fictional accounts of Harvard life and the actual experience, according to the Office of the University Provost, which oversees trademark issues.

The movie has only a single shot of a dorm room with a Harvard banner to connote any relation to the University, and the fact that the movie involves Harvard has done little to spur ticket sales in the area.

“I actually think that it is the movie that the least amount of people are coming to see,” said Georges Fleurme an employee at the Loews cineplex in Boston yesterday. “It is not making much money.”

After opening to mediocre and poor reviews, Stealing Harvard was the fourth highest-grossing movie of the weekend nationally, earning $6.3 million in its opening weekend, according to early figures from the Exhibitor Relations Company.

Martin P. Cooney, the only other person in the theater when a Crimson reporter viewed the movie yesterday, said he thought the movie was only “OK.”

“I hope no one would go to that extent to pay for college,” he said pointing at the screen and shaking his head.

In fact, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said the financial responsibility for someone in Noreen’s situation would most likely not be as hefty as the sum that Plummer’s character has to raise.

“Harvard financial aid packages are composed with consideration to the family’s financial situations,” he explained.

Someone living in a trailer park in Noreen’s portrayed financial situation would most likely receive a large grant; the rest of the financial aid would then consist of either a work-study job or a loan to be paid after graduation totaling no more than $5,000, he said.

“We are not encouraging anyone to commit armed robbery to come to Harvard,” Fitzsimmons laughed.

Fitzsimmons joked that while trying to “steal” Harvard is a worthy cause, he would have liked to see some alliteration in the title.

“I like the sound of Heisting Harvard,” Fitzsimmons said.

—Staff writer Maria S. Pedroza can be reached at mpedroza@fas.harvard.edu.