SOMETHING ARTY AND foreign lurks in Rushmore‘s syncopated rhythms and spare, loose images. It’s as if Jean-Luc Godard and Takeshi Kitano (Fireworks, Sonatine) had collaborated on Revenge of the Nerds. But the characters are brazenly American: Max Fischer, a student at a private academy who’s part P.T. Barnum con artist and part hopeless romantic; Herman Blume, a self-loathing steel tycoon; Dirk Calloway, a Jimmy Olsenesque sidekick of Blume’s who discovers his hero isn’t made of steel. Only Rosemary Cross, a British first-grade teacher, has a European pragmatism—yet even she gets caught up in the buoyant spirit of Max’s endless plans for the world. Maybe if The Seventh Seal had been made by Charlie Chaplin and 1940s screwball genius Preston Sturges instead of that mopey old Ingmar Bergman, it would have been as lean, subtle, and constantly surprising a comedy as Rushmore.

Rushmore

directed by Wes Anderson

starring Jason Schwartzman, Bill

Murray, Olivia Williams

Max (Jason Schwartzman) is the founder or president of just about every extracurricular club Rushmore Academy offers; he’s also been placed on sudden-death academic probation for his abysmal grades. When he falls in love with Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), he prepares to build an aquarium to impress her, with financial support from one of Rushmore’s benefactors, Mr. Blume (Bill Murray). Kindred spirits Blume and Max become good friends—but then Blume too falls in love with Miss Cross. Just as swiftly as Blume and Max’s friendship began, it twists into a bitter rivalry. From here, the story takes so many unexpected and immensely funny turns that to describe them would not only take up the rest of this review, it would dissipate much of the movie’s charm.

JASON SCHWARTZMAN HAS never been in a movie before, but he has an immediate, quirky charisma. Imagine a dorky Tom Cruise; his performance is at once cocky and helpless, wounded and on the attack, petty and incredibly brave. Bill Murray gives a performance so subtle and touching that it’s almost like he’s just standing there while the movie flows around him, polishing him like a pebble in a stream. Olivia Williams wins both men’s love not by virtue of her patrician loveliness, but because of her wary intelligence and willowy strength.

But then every actor is superb. When Dirk (Mason Gamble) discovers that Blume is seeing Miss Cross, he confronts the tycoon, spitting out the words, “I know about you and the teacher!” like a wrathful God. In that moment, the movie is all about him. Likewise, every character seems to commandeer the film whenever he or she comes on. They all have lives of their own, casting a luminous glow in every corner of Rushmore‘s world.

Director Wes Anderson’s previous feature, Bottle Rocket, was an amusing film about three guys who set out on a heist—but something goes wrong. Four or five other movies released around the same time had the same basic plot. At its best, Bottle Rocket left that plot behind and took off on goofball tangents. Anderson must have learned from that, because he made Rushmore out of almost nothing but goofball tangents. I haven’t seen the preview trailers for it, but I’m sure they’re terrible. Rushmore can’t be broken down into kinetic flashes and sound bites; any given moment in the movie, taken on its own, could seem flat and off-kilter—but they accumulate into a glorious mosaic, a delicious dessert. Don’t be misled. Go see it. You won’t see a funnier or more sweetly soulful movie anytime soon.