"Carmine Said One Boy, Here Are Two!"

We recently caught the last half of The Freshman, a 1990 film starring Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick.  We'd seen it in the theater in its initial release and once or twice over the years and seeing it again reminded us of what a funny and sweet-natured film it is.

Matthew Broderick, plays Clark Kellogg of Vermont, who has just arrived in New York to attend NYU.  Brando plays Carmine Sabatini in what you might think is a funny take on his Godfather role, but we are corrected by Carmine's nephew, Vic (Bruno Kirby), who tells us that it's the other way around, the Godfather character was based on Mr Sabatini.  Broderick is terrific as the naive, but quick on his feet, Vermonter, while Brando is simply brilliant in his slyly funny send up of Don Corleone and there is a lovely scene in which the by-now gargantuan Brando glides serenely across the ice at a skating rink.

There is a dearth of good clips from the film on YouTube, but a few are below.  Unfortunately, there is no footage of Bert Park's singing the Bob Dylan classic, Maggie's Farm.  The title of this post is derived from the first clip, in which Broderick and a friend have just delivered a Komodo Dragon (it's a long and funny story) to gourmet chief Larry London, played by Maximilian Schell (who seems to be channeling Peter Sellers).