READ THIS FIRST: This is a 12-inch Diameter Laserdisc, which is NOT the same as DVD and cannot be played on a DVD player!

Laserdisc Title: "THE FRESHMAN"
Edition: Fullscreen Edition (Single Disc)
Directed By: Andrew Bergman
Starring: Marlon Brando, Matthew Broderick, Bruno Kirby, Penelope Ann Miller, Frank Whaley
Production / Year: 1990 Tri-Star Pictures, Inc.
Running Time: 102 Minutes / Color
Audio Format: Digital Sound, Dolby Surround, Stereo, CX Encoded
Video Format: NTSC, CLV (Extended Play)
Miscellaneous Features: Rated PG, Closed Captioned
Distributed By: RCA Columbia Pictures Home Video
Catalog / Spine Number: 70296

Cosmetic Condition:
Disc (s): Very Good - Few very light to very minor hairline surface swirls or very light fingerprint marks
Jacket: Very Good - Normal shelf wear, creases, sticker residue, scuffs, worn-out corners or edges and small taped-up split middle of bottom spine

Synopsis:

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."

This comedy, written and directed by Andrew Bergman, wears its zaniness on its sleeve. The hero, Clark (Matthew Broderick), is a quiet young man from Vermont who has just entered the N.Y.U. film school. Within a few days of arriving in New York, he's making deliveries for an "importer" named Carmine Sabatini (Marlon Brando) and being treated like a member of Sabatini's family (or Family): Carmine's daughter (Penelope Ann Miller) has told her father that she wants to marry Clark, and the old man embraces him, with alarming enthusiasm, as "the son I never had." The movie is over-insistent and very erratic. When Bergman's jokes are good, they're sensational; when they're not so good, he repeats them again and again, as if they'd become funnier through familiarity. In this picture he has actors who play his sort of material to perfection. Miller and Bruno Kirby, as Carmine's fast-talking weaselly nephew, are hilariously unfazed by the family's criminal activities, and Broderick calibrates his reactions with remarkable comic dexterity. And Brando seems to be in a bizarre and wonderful world of his own. People in the movie keep staring at him and commenting on his resemblance to Don Corleone, and he plays along, parodying himself marvelously. In his scenes the movie seems less frantic; its lunacy takes on an air of serenity-a deeper, more inexplicable, and much funnier weirdness. Also with Paul Benedict, Maximilian Schell, B. D. Wong, and Bert Parks (belting out "Tequila" and Dylan's sardonic "Maggie's Farm" at a formal dinner).

A delight of humor, as both Broderick and Brando excel. Look for a tour de force by Maximillian Schnell as the mysterious Larry London.

Lots of in-jokes here, from the portrayal of NYU Film School to Sabatini telling Kellogg that he knows a few people in Hollywood! The final scenes leave you laughing (Bert Parks hailing a Komodo Dragon with a Miss America parody, the very Germanic London being given intro music of a few notes of "Deutchland Uber Alles" and "The Ride of the Valkyies", Sabatini addressing said Komodo Dragon with "You cudda been a handbag" (recalling the backseat scene from "On the Waterfront"). The movie never takes itself too seriously.

THIS IS NOT A DVD!!! THIS IS A 12" LASERDISC AND WILL NOT PLAY IN A DVD PLAYER

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