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Dead man on campus

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Roommate wanted... for a limited time only.

The first year of university can be tough, especially when you're having too much fun. With the threat of failure, the freshmen have to resort to desperate measures to improve their grades. Their salvation comes in the form of an arcane loophole buried in the university charter which might even let this pair slip through with straight A grades.

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Suicide heaven.

I went to university (college) and even lived in a dorm on campus but no-one ever committed suicide. Or at least, no-one that mattered. That's the loophole referred to above - if your roomie commits suicide you get passing grades as a consolation prize.

In his book on famous urban legends, Curses! Broiled again! Jan Harold Brunvand writes, "If there's a college campus in the USA that doesn't have a suicide rule legend, I've yet to discover it. And if there's a school that does have such a rule on the books, I haven't found it yet either."

But we shouldn't let little things like the facts get in the way of a good story and the makers of Dead man on campus haven't either. Which is good because if they had, I wouldn't have had a zany, funny, testosterone-filled afternoon. This film takes the suicide premise and puts it into several other famous stories - Fnimal house, The odd couple and Porky's. That it works at all is commendable but that it works well is even better.

Dead man on campus (a pun on "big man on campus") combines the wildness, poignancy and crudity of the above three films into a zesty melange that tickles the taste buds as well as the funny bone. Tom Everett Scott (Josh) and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Cooper) (cute and cuter) are not only cute in that Tommy Hilfiger way, they can act and have brilliant comic timing. They carry this film on their backs effortlessly. Their girlfriends are babes and the rest of the people are extras with lines, apart from Lochlyn Munro as psycho Cliff - party animal from hell.

It's funny, it's zippy, it's touching. It even made me laugh, and that's an accomplishment. If someone you love recently killed themselves you might not enjoy this movie, but then again, maybe you will...

Security censorship classification

M (Drug use, sexual references, medium level coarse language)

Not for public release in Australia before date

VHS retail: 10 March 2000