Touches You

Just perfect...

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I am an emeritus professor at a Big Ten University in Columbus, Ohio (for the non-US based readers: this is one of the best known universities in the US), so I have plenty of experience with academic life in general, and hiring/tenure processes in particular. It was very amusing to see that the movie's description of academic life was so wrong that not even the opposite would have been anywhere nearby the truth. It was so wrong that I am sure it was deliberate. Nevertheless, this was a very entertaining movie. I had a good time watching it.I strongly recommend it to my academic colleagues because it is fun to see how others imagine academic life.BTW, e.g., "The Big Bang Theory" is not better either in showing academic life; still it is a fabulously superb sitcom.P.S. I wonder if the reason that movies pretending to show the intricacies of academic life end up painting a false picture only because showing the actual reality would be simply too boring and disappointing for the "people on the street".

Mike Million's 'Tenure' gives the impression that it's a university campus comedy. I found the premise refreshing and appealing. The problem is that the comedy parts are just not that funny and Million tries too much to make it quirky funny to the point that it backfires as he goes way over the top and tumbles down.I found the Jay Hadley character very annoying and not to be a very believable professor. The Rosemarie DeWitt track also felt out-of-place. The movie should have just stayed focused on the key character Charlie Thurber. Many people of his age would be able to relate to what he's going through. I liked the Million avoids clichés in places. For example, the Teacher's pet sequence was well done.On the technical side, the score is pretty good and the camera captures the simplicity and beauty of the location. The woods and countryside are nice to look at. The pacing is very slow, especially at the beginning. Luke Wilson is terrific. His restrained performance as Charlie makes the character all the more real. And if this film is worth watching then it's mostly because of him. David Koechner does his best with an ill-written character. Gretchen Mol is cute and likable. Sasha Alexander is wasted.Overall, it's not as bad as many reviewers have made it out to be but it could have easily been a lot better.

"Tenure" is a comedy about college professors. It has its fair share of problems, mainly that it has a really weak (in some cases false) description of college life for professors. And its hard to call this a comedy.The jokes are very sophomoric, you may laugh a little bit, but these jokes are for the lowest common denominator. I found it a very odd mix, since generally movies about academic professors are supposed to be more intelligent. Do not mistake this movie as intelligent. David Koechner (who I am generally not a big fan of) is in the main comedic role, he crosses the line from professor to student, and his jokes cross the line from decent to unacceptable.That aside, the rest of the movie is a pretty good exploration of a smart, but insecure, 30-something guy. Luke Wilson is his usual, likable self, and I looked forward to the resolution for his character."Tenture" is not the smart, funny academic film that I was expecting (and that I think it was supposed to be), but I found a bit of myself in Luke Wilson's character and I was smiling at the end. If you ignore the promise of high comedy, this film can be enjoyed.

I already knew from "You Kill Me" that there are gems in the presumably purgatorial straight-to-Blockbuster pipeline, and my guess from the "Tenure" cover art that the marketers just didn't know what to do with Mike Million's directorial debut (of his own screenplay). The Blockbuster page for this one lists "no similar movies..." which sums it up pretty well.Although Million is obviously a fan of Wes Anderson - from the music to a for-the-initiated "cacaw" - and though the Wilson-and-Koechner combo (and the college setting) may have renters hoping for something familiarly debauched and "zany", he resists visiting those well-traveled extremes, as well as the dead spots and emotional browbeating of the small-and-heartfelt-indie-comedy genre."Tenure" is funny without relying on, say, Will Ferrell running around naked. It is heartfelt without a drop of treacle, and a "loser-finds-his-bliss" comedy whose hero (and even his 'wacky friend') have a quiet self-respect which suffuses the entire film.No one will be surprised at this point in Hollywood history to see a Bigfoot obsession mined for laughs, or for an adult son to drop in on his father's nursing home and catch some old-people sex. But leave it, apparently, to Mike Million to deliver these goods in ways that we haven't quite seen before (and deliver the news that David Koechner can really act. Bob Gunton, aka the warden from Shawshank Redemption, also displays layers I do not personally remember seeing before. I will now await him as I do the Philip Baker Halls...) There are undoubtedly those who will accuse Tenure of not quite knowing what it wanted to be. But for anyone starting to see in every new movie merely echoes of its ancestors (am I the only person in the world who found "Avatar" long, tedious and way too predictable?) it was nice to see that Mike Million knew well the various territories on which he was in danger of encroaching, and deftly walked a difficult path between them. If everything in Tenure was familiar, nothing in it was tiresome or clichéd. Which takes real courage to attempt, and a real, veteran-like talent to pull off.If you watch this movie and feel that it did not quite deliver enough "Old School," or on the other hand enough "Rushmore," blame your conditioned expectations and watch it again. You'll realize you didn't want it to - and that it delivered something else. Real restraint. Real characters. Real dignity - even Bigfoot gets respect in this movie. And some real one-upping of the kind of punchline (Gunton's "plastic knife" line comes to mind) that you could have sworn could no longer be memorably/freshly conceived or delivered on screen.Then - since it's too late for him to punch up Avatar - you'll start wondering what familiarities Million is going to make unfamiliar next.