Cheap Dead Man on Campus (Video) (Alan Cohn) Price

Well, it's a good idea. Dead Man on Campus had the potential to be a classic dark comedy: Two students at a prestigious university are flunking out; however, due to a provision in the school's charter, if they had a roommate who committed suicide, they'd both get straight A's as a form of reparation for grief and trauma. So, to stay in school, they seek out the most depressed student on campus and transfer him into their three-person dorm room. Unfortunately, rather than satirizing the real issues--academic narrow-mindedness, parental pressure, the obsessiveness of late adolescence--the movie is a compilation of frat-boy clichés and jokes that want to be in bad taste but are actually quite tame. The leads (Tom Everett Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar) are pleasant and the soundtrack (produced by the Dust Brothers) has some very hip selections, but after a snappy opening-credit sequence, the movie stumbles along, aimless and sluggish. Alyson Hannigan (American Pie, Willow on TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has a small role and is her charming geeky self. --Bret Fetzer

CATEGORY:	Video
DIRECTOR:	Alan Cohn
THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE:	21 August, 1998
MANUFACTURER:	Paramount
MPAA RATING:	R (Restricted)
FEATURES:	Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
TYPE:	Comedies, Drama, Feature Film Comedy, Feature Film-comedy, Movie
MEDIA:	VHS Tape
# OF MEDIA:	1
UPC:	097363317432