In civilised countries young people who want to succeed in life are supposed to go to prestigious colleges. Protagonist of Getting In a.k.a. Student Body, 1994 black comedy directed by Doug Liman, has additional motive for that. Gabriel Higgs (played by Stephen Mailer) is young man who wants to study botany, but his family for generations happened to produce doctors with Johns Hopkins diploma. Higgs succumbs to tradition and applies to that prestigious institution. Unfortunately his test results are anything but stellar and he ends up sixth on the waiting list. Instead of disappointing his parents, Higgs decides to try convincing five people ahead of him to drop off the list. His plan soon gets complicated due to various things - some of those people demand bribe, some are attractive women like Kirby Watts (played by Kirsty Swanson), and some just happen to die in mysterious circumstances.
Independent filmmaker Doug Liman became one of critics' darlings of 1990s due to comedies like Swingers and Go. The plot of this film provided a good opportunity for filmmaker with a taste for dark comedy. Unfortunately, this opportunity wasn't taken. Screenwriter's creativity dried up with the "high concept". What remained was the series of predictable cliched situations and jokes that would hardly make anyone laugh. The cast of Getting In was even bigger disappointment - despite the presence of notable names like Kristy Swanson, Matthew Perry and Calista Flockhart (although the last two yet had to become household names during the production of this film), we can hardly sense any sympathy for the characters. The only memorable performance is given by Andrew McCarthy who obviously has a lot of fun playing psychopath. Unfortunately, instead to allow us view the film from his perspective, Doug Liman employs uninteresting and anaemic Stephen Mailer. Because of that Getting In is nothing more than a celluloid corpse.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on September 19th 2002)
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