1 post tagged “olivia williams”

My weekend viewing was pretty light. Friday night, I watched Rushmore, a Netflix movie I had been putting off watching. One of those movies I'm not sure how it got on my list, or even how
it ever percolated to the top. Movies about high school angst do nothing for me.

But while waiting for the girls to finish their swim class, I was flipping through a magazine. It was some supplement magazine put out by Wired, and it was all about movies. And in it was a very interesting list (who doesn't love lists?) of the 50 best movie soundtracks of all time. My Google-fu fails me on finding this list, but suffice to say that Rushmore was on it, and pretty high up too. So I was spurred on to give it a viewing.

And I liked it. It was wacky enough to overcome my natural dislike of movies that celebrate high school angst. Telling the story of a natural born slacker who looks for corners to cut and things to do besides schoolwork, who falls in love with a teacher, competes with Bill Murray for her attention, finds out the truth of the maxim "Revenge is a dish best served cold", and comes to settle into his own life, Rushmore does a good job of keeping you off balance. And the fact it had the beautiful Olivia Williams (sadly underutilized in films since), didn't hurt either.

But it did involve too much high schooler pathos at times. I'm sorry, but to be honest, my high school years just weren't that bad, and I have no urge to relive someone else's horrible times there. I was involved in enough sports and academic stuff to blend well enough with both the geeks and the athletes. Sure, I had my heart broken a few times, but not so that it scarred me for life. And while the times weren't too bad, they were neither the high point nor the low point of my life, and so I'm just not interested in revisiting them. Sure, the old "if I knew then what I know now" would kick in, and yes I did have a big crush on one of my high school teachers like Max Fischer did, but they are mostly times well served by warm over memories.

Rushmore was rescued by the completely believable performances by Jason Schwartzman as the geeky, gawky Max Fischer, and the aforementioned Bill Murray and Olivia Williams, as well as by the superb soundtrack. Some great songs were in there, from all over the map, but the new wave / grunge metal was the best. I really liked the last song, "Ooh La La" by the Faces and Rod Stewart (speaking of "wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger"!). So, all in all, it was well worth watching, even if you don't like "coming of age" movies.

Rushmore