Overview
When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.
After his first film, Bottle Rocket, this was the one where Anderson really started to lay out his niche.
The film focusses on 15 year old Max Fisher (Jason Schwartzman), possibly the worst student at Rushmore private school, but also the most active in extra curricular activities. He builds a friendship with a rich industrialist, Herman Blum (Bill Murray), but the arrival of a new elementary teacher Rosemary (Olivia Williams) threatens the friendship and turns Max’s life upside-down.
Script by Anderson and Owen Wilson – Wilson had also been kicked out of school in the tenth grade. Bill Murray was drawn to the script and agreed to work for scale. Whilst there were storyboards, Murray was given freedom to improvise on set, which served the film well.
Quirky and beautifully framed – whilst the colour palette of Anderson’s latter films wasn’t yet present, the styling were there, such as the eclectic music choices including Unit 4+2, The Creation, Kinks, Lennon, Cat Stevens, Faces, and a brilliant use of The Who’s A Quick One While He’s Away – that scene itself being the point at which I realised I was in love with this film!
Genuinely funny, with some of the sparkiest dialogue exchanges in Anderson’s cinematic history. Whilst he has refined his style over following films, and created a perfect CV in my opinion, this is the one I love the most. It was the film that drew me to Anderson, and I regularly revisit it with the same joy.