The Freshman: A Stunning Trainwreck of Marlon Brando, Komodo Dragons, and Daddy Issues

I came for the old New York and giant lizards: but found what looked like an unfinished story about a country boy who just wants a strong dad, and ends up spending an inordinate amount of time in New Jersey instead.

It started, as it often does, with a late-night shitposting session on Twitter followed by texting my friends.

It was a few days before my long-awaited relocation date from New York to Los Angeles, and I was going to meet up with one of my long-time friends who had moved upstate but she wasn’t feeling well. Since the pandemic is still far from over, she didn’t want to risk traveling and infecting others so she understandably stayed home. All by myself for the final days in my homeland, it was too cold and disease-ridden downstate for me to want to do anything other than go back to my hotel room and watch movies. In doing so, she talked about movies that had come up in her Netflix and Amazon queues.

“Hey, did you ever see that movie where Marlon Brando chases Matthew Broderick all over the city with a Komodo dragon?”

“Wait, WHAT?!”

I almost jumped out of my chair in the mousehole-sized Manhattan hotel room I was staying in while between residences. “How is it that 2021 is the first time I’ve freaking heard of this?!”

So based on my impressions thus far, the 1990 comedy-drama The Freshman had Retro Rewind written all over it: Ferris Bueller and The Godfather duke it out in the old New York — which I wax about on Fanfare constantly — and there’s giant lizards involved.

I IMMEDIATELY knew I had to sit down and watch.

Funny thing about entertainment is that it’s often the best when it totally subverts your expectations. For instance, And Just Like That is getting torched in both critic and viewer ratings, but it’s one of HBO Max’s most-watched shows. Fans are pissed about Miranda going off the deep end, but I never expected to find myself rooting for Charlotte.

Your expectations are definitely subverted here: we think it’s a story about the New York, but most of it actually takes place in New Jersey. (Or to be precise, Ontario masquerading as New Jersey.)

There’s a Komodo dragon involved, but I think it was the biggest red herring in film history.

The Freshman is definitely a bit of a trainwreck, despite being well-received. In fact, I was surprised that Janet Maslin and Roger Ebert both praised it, and The Freshman has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and almost five stars on Amazon Video. IMDb users weren’t as charitable, giving it 6.5 out of 10 stars.

I think that this was all out of love for The Godfather than anything else, with Marlon Brando just hamming it up in his golden years.

Not to mention that we had some pretty high-profile actors and cameos spanning across generations, like Gianni Russo (Carlo in The Godfather) and Bert Parks as the Gourmet Club’s entertainment for the evening.

Now, before we really dive into the story and premise, I have to geek out as a reptile expert here.

Hey, you expected a retrospective, you expected waxing about the old New York, but instead I’m giving you a primer in reptile behaviors. It was impossible to watch this movie without thinking about it as a dinosaur wrangler!

The movie begins with that Komodo dragon that we’re anticipating hatching from its egg. Why, I don’t know: a Komodo dragon actually spends a few years as a baby! They live in the trees to avoid cannibalistic adult dragons, and don’t reach adult size until about 8–9 years after hatching.

Here’s the lizard from the opening, which is certainly not a hatchling:

And this is what an actual Komodo dragon hatchling looks like:

The former looks like a juvenile Gray’s Monitor, though the face shape looks more like a tegu without the fat cheeks.

This is because film and TV shoots would never use actual adult or baby Komodo dragons. Just like the movie script says, they are incredibly endangered animals, plus even a captive-bred Komodo dragon would pose too much risk to the cast and crew if it got stressed out on set. Professional herpers like Jay Brewer from Prehistoric Pets have used their Asian water monitors in film and TV production, Jay was the steward of the famous Mr. Kipling from Jessie.

As I explained in this piece on the difference between Komodo dragons and Asian water monitors, the two can get confused since they’re both giant lizards.

The grown-up “Komodo dragon” in this movie is definitely an Asian water monitor that is likely het Black Dragon, based on the coloration. Meaning that they carry the Black Dragon gene and have a 50% chance of one of their eggs producing a completely melanistic Black Dragon, and are on the darker side but still have enough dappling and patterns that make them the opposite of monochrome.

But then there were parts that were shockingly accurate, like when Edward says he smells chlorine and someone’s been a naughty dragon. If you’re going to go swimming with your dinosaur, chlorine is not good for monitor lizards! They’ll be fine if they hop in the pool with you for a minute, but don’t let them stay too long or get water in their eyes. Use a non-chlorinated pool if possible.

But unlike what Clark says at the end, you CAN take a giant lizard for a walk! Wouldn’t recommend doing that with a Komodo dragon, though.

Also, neither Komodo dragons nor Asian water monitors make any noises like the ones you’ll hear a lot. That’s the foley getting creative. Monitors let out this low hiss that’s like a snake on steroids when they’re angry or defensive, they made this one sound like a kaiju.

And with reptile expertise out of the way, onto this lovable trainwreck of a story!

So, we’ve got your typical “young, overwhelmed rural kid comes to New York City for the first time” story that was just this staple of 20th century Hollywood.

Okay, maybe The Freshman is not an absolute trainwreck: but it’s a story that perhaps could’ve been told better.

After all, TV is a writer-led medium and movies are director-led. The director here absolutely wanted to give Marlon Brando and the giant lizard as much screen time as possible, and for that I honestly can’t blame him. They both chew on the scenery like it’s a freaking caramel apple.

Movies also have a limited run time, and both the script writer and director can end up going to war over their respective visions. I think there perhaps was a deeper story here, but there wasn’t enough screen time to tell it.

I remember when I first took fiction writing classes between careers, they instilled that you ultimately want to SHOW the viewer rather than tell them things. And…we don’t get that with our hero Clark Kellogg, played by Matthew Broderick. He can’t decide if he’s going to narrate this adventure, or just let us watch. He’s definitely not the cocksure extrovert that was Ferris Bueller, which is understandable in that he probably didn’t want to get typecast.

But wait a minute! Andrew Bergman pulled double duty as writer AND director!

I posit that he wanted to tell a deeper story about Clark missing his father, butting heads with the stepfather, and being all too willing to get sucked into a dangerous underworld because he needs money.

My guess is that between limits on runtime and production funds, Bergman just made the most of these top-tier actors and cameos and wanted to spend as much time as possible with giant lizards. Which frankly, I can’t fault that at all. After all, we’re led to believe it’s a college movie about 1990s New York, it’s really a romp in New Jersey with a mob family and a Komodo dragon.

How is the “starry-eyed college student from the country has culture shock and it gets them into trouble” angle still used today? The 80s and 90s had this deluge of “fish out of water” college movies, like Son In Law, when universities were presented as these utopian party villas rather than a force that ass-rams you with debt and no guarantee of financial stability when you emerge.

Although the Internet and concentration of our news media in coastal cities coinciding with numerous consolidations and closures of regional and small town newsrooms have taken the mystery out of it that we still had in the 90s. After all, the same four chain stores would be found in modern-day New York that one could easily find in Vermont. That wasn’t exactly the case back then.

Then as a native New Yorker, I have to point out the glaring inaccuracy that Clark exits his train from Vermont at Grand Central rather than Penn Station. It’s the 2020s as I write this and East Side Access is still in the works. The Metro North lines that run out of Grand Central go slightly upstate, but not even anywhere close to Albany let alone Vermont. The Ethan Allen Express Amtrak route goes to Penn Station once a day. It’s a long and scenic journey, I took it to visit the very same friend who recommended this movie when she was living in Rutland!

A con man like Vince probably wouldn’t do his grift in Grand Central, which is mostly commuters from Westchester and Putnam counties. He’d be waiting outside Penn Station for marks fresh from America’s heartland.

The revisiting of Little Italy was pure poetry, given that so much of Spring Street is now $6,000/month apartments and $25 salad joints. But I promise that Carmine Sabatini, the Godfather-esque character who later employs Clark, is only the beginning of how weird it gets.

As implied in the title, the real crux of this movie is daddy issues.

The Asian water monitors that play the Komodo dragon (yes, there’s definitely multiple lizards — I could tell based on the size and temperament) got all the fanfare, but the story is really about Clark’s daddy issues.

When the 80s were trying to die and become the 90s, as is evident by the music that plays when Clark enters Grand Central, I remember there was this massive wave of after school specials and movies geared towards young people that had characters whose parents were divorced or widowed. The Brady Bunch put blended families at the forefront, but most people didn’t relate to the saccharine conflicts and a household of eight having only one bathroom. Murphy Brown revolutionized single motherhood and Full House gave us a single dad heading a fairly alternative household despite the anodyne façade, but eventually, grittier content was served up where stepfamily became a major source of conflict.

The Freshman actually does a shitty job at showing that Clark has a strained relationship with his stepfather. He literally tells us what’s going on when his stepfather scares off the hunter on their outing together out of his love for animals. But while they don’t look like they have a super close and warm relationship, he at least sends Clark off to college with some money and seems cordial enough — he’s not seen yelling at Clark or his mother, or causing them problems on purpose. He’s just never going to live up to Clark’s late biological father, and that’s that.

After Vince robs Clark near Washington Square Park, we meet Clark’s roommate Steve who’s been seemingly primed for film school since he was in diapers. They instantly become besties. I have a feeling the director had some cool stories about getting into hijinx with his film school roommates, which is how Steve unwittingly joins Clark on this voyage to Cherry Hill. Which is actually closer to Philadelphia than New York, but “Vito Corleone type mob boss on Passyunk” just didn’t have the same cachet as a manse in Queens with operations on Mulberry Street.

On that note, I studied the deluge of college movies that came out about a decade later, did anyone of any gender or walk of life ever form a long-lasting friendship with their college roommate? I only had one who constantly started arguments with me before I dropped out then eventually went to City University that was commuter, so enlighten me on this!

But the real inciting incident is when Clark reveals his money was in the purloined suitcase, along with the textbooks he needed.

His professor is a complete hard-ass who won’t cut him any slack in light of what happened, and dismissively says he can just ask his parents for more money: that’s not an option given his strained relationship with his stepfather, who holds the purse strings in the family. Given that NYU ranks 73 out of almost 2,400 colleges in terms of their students that are the progeny of the 1%, it’s unsurprising Professor Fleeber thinks Clark can just use his parents like an ATM.

Since Clark is a film student, and Professor Fleeber absolutely lives for the medium, I guess it’s trying to do a whole meta analysis since they watch The Godfather in class and discuss it. There’s loads of other film references as well, and a hefty trivia section on The Freshman’s IMDb page. But we’ve got your classic 90s afternoon movie conflict: dude needs money, has to get it fast, there’s no such thing as PayPal or Affirm yet, and that means you’re going to do something pretty batshit and dastardly to get cash that quick as a fresh-faced high school graduate.

So where does the Komodo dragon come in?

Clark wants to know why Vince stole from him after he chases him down. Sensing his desperation, Vince offers to introduce him to the mob boss, Carmine Sabatini.

We then get an uncomfortable scene where Carmine’s daughter Tina gets extremely flirtatious with Clark and kisses him despite him showing no interest. This was long before we discussed not only how horribly misogynistic movies of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s portrayed things like consent and attitudes towards women and sex in general, but also how men can get into situations where they don’t consent to women forcing themselves onto them.

Anyway, Clark heads to JFK for the cargo pickup job Carmine assigned him. He’s joined by nouveau BFF Steve on this mission. As Big Leo gives the whole schpiel about the Komodo dragon imported from Borneo, I immediately melted looking at that adorable Asian water monitor.

Going back to herper mode momentarily: yes, exotic pets will often go through the import process at major airports like this. But you would NOT find a giant lizard on a leash like that sitting in a cargo hold, they would be in a specially-marked crate that is properly ventilated and has a heat source — I immediately thought that poor baby must’ve been cold!

We get an incredibly fun chase scene where the “Komodo dragon” gets out of the car in New Jersey, and they have to chase it through a mall upon causing chaos.

There are no consequences for it. Security tries to stop the wily monitor lizard, but to no avail. He goes swimming in that chlorinated fountain, but once Clark and Steve get him out, that’s it. It’s something of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, although it is a realistic giant lizard behavior for them to curiously explore their surroundings and bolt if they’re stressed!

Why were they picking up a Komodo dragon for the Carmine “Jimmy the Toucan” Sabatini?

A frightening endeavor called The Gourmet Club where people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per plate to eat ENDANGERED SPECIES.

This movie can’t decide if it wants to be meta analysis or an absolute mindfuck.

Clark’s not just doing a little delivery job for a notorious mobster: he’s getting sucked into the mob life and family.

Literally, he’s barely known Tina for two days and Carmine is already arranging for them to get married! When it’s revealed that Komodo dragons are endangered species and Clark’s stepfather wants him to serve time for abetting in smuggling them for the mob, things suddenly twist real fast.

And don’t forget, we’re ultimately being driven by Clark’s daddy issues. Even if Carmine is suddenly seizing the reins of Clark’s life here, Clark still sees him as more of a strong father figure than his stepfather. Carmine’s giving him a chance to prove himself that his stepfather hasn’t, even his unfair film professor is holding him to a ridiculous standard but this mafioso believes in him and is happy to reward him with cash, fine food, and affection.

Even if Clark’s not the Komodo dragon’s biggest fan, he still doesn’t want the Gourmet Club to follow through with what they’re about to do. So we do get a great amount of tension here as Clark plots how to get out of his predicament, while seeking the aid of FBI agents who want to take down the Sabatini crime family.

Then we get the absolute high point of the movie: Miss America announcer Bert Parks’ cameo as the dinner entertainment where he not only provides a boisterous rendition of “Tequila!”, but “There She Is” has become an ode to Komodo dragons.

The twists and turns that ensue transform Clark’s adventures chasing a giant lizard all over New Jersey into this utter cavalcade of obvious lampshading of mob movies.

The feds are the good guys helping animals here!

No…they’re corrupt agents aiding a rival crime family who just want to take down Sabatini.

The Gourmet Club eats endangered species!

No…it’s a con from the Sabatini family, ripping off rich people paying $200,000 a plate for what’s really just fish and roast turkey. Which given how much worse income inequality got in the past 30 years, now makes them look the real heroes of this narrative.

Carmine Sabatini was killed by a gunshot wound!

No…he faked his own death so the corrupt FBI agents would believe so.

That Italian passport and arranged marriage to Tina?

It was all a big joke!

But these plot twists are like Cheetos, they don’t fill you up when you get to the bottom of the bag. So it doesn’t even feel satisfying seeing Professor Fleeber suddenly atone for being so awful to Clark, it’s just because he’s afraid of the Sabatini family. Ditto for when Clark delivers that Reason You Suck speech to his stepfather about how he’ll never be like his REAL dad was.

In addition to the sudden twists, it also begs the question: if the Gourmet Club was just a grift where rich people think they’re eating endangered species when it’s really things you can find in any grocery store, why were they smuggling endangered animals from out of the country? Just to display them first?

Why would Carmine Sabatini make Clark think he’s marrying his daughter in just two days?! If the supposed intent was to make him think a new life awaits after being charged with a federal crime, it was a pretty traumatizing way to go about it.

So in conclusion, The Freshman was still a fun romp but it was definitely doing too much telling instead of showing, and seems indicative of more story that was meant to be told but star power trumped doing more scenes fleshing it out.

It’s absolutely the kind of enjoyable trainwreck that only could’ve come out of the late 80s and early 90s, before we got the whole “complex and slightly sympathetic mobster in New Jersey” thing that comprised The Sopranos.

And I agree with the YouTube commentariat on this one: