Tenure (2009)

Charlie Thurber (Luke Wilson) is an English professor at a small, New England college. Although his students love and learn from him, his possible tenure is in doubt. This is because of the "publish or perish" unwritten law that is prevalent in American academia. So far, Charlie is having trouble getting his essays into an admired journal. To complicate things, his father is in an extended care facility nearby, due to early dementia, but, Charlie is not visiting him often enough. This has angered his sister and upset his dad, who was also a prof and likes to converse with his son. A colleague, Jay (David Koechner), an unorthodox science instructor in search of a bigfoot-type local monster, is also up for tenure. Now, the dean lures a Yale-educated English academic, Elaine Grasso (Gretchen Mol) to the department, further complicating Charlie's quest for tenure. Jay suggests that the two males mildly "sabotage" Elaine's adjustment to the school, by arranging to make her look bad in front of others, especially the dean. This involves everything from implicating her in a "cola" theft in the staff room to questioning her school loyalty at the college basketball game, where Elaine inadvertently sat on the opposing team's side. But, wait, does Charlie really want to drive Elaine away, since she's so smart and pretty and he's single? For those who love comedy-romance, here is another sweet view. Wilson's dry, understated humor is always welcome while Mol is a lovely romantic interest. The rest of the cast, including Koechner, are wonderfully supportive. The beautiful east coast college campus will surely bring sighs of admiration and the costumes, script, photography, and steady direction are quite fine as well. Get Tenure, therefore, all you usual fan suspects.

In a fictitious small college in the United States, a mediocre professor of English literature (played by Luke Wilson) see his job threatened because tenure is soon up, and the university has decided to bring in to compete for his job a supposedly brilliant as well as beautiful young professor from Yale (the lovely Gretchen Mol). This is supposed to be an affectionate satire of the academic world in the US, but I found little affection in what I see. As for the supposed humor, I don't recall laughing once at this movie. Seeing these people with their ridiculous trappings, the vain and pompous administrators, it is clear these professors and administrators add very little value to the rest of the society, yet they live not badly and with a certain status. While the movie obviously exaggerates, from what I read is a not altogether incorrect depiction of life in the rarefied US academic world. Are academics smart people? It doesn't seem so from this movie. Here they look pretty pathetic. It's funny how the Gretchen Mol character is repeatedly described as super smart, when she seems to be the typical dumb blonde (she is the most likable character in the movie, though). The Luke Wilson character, though not entirely unlikable, is a man in his late thirties that is still single and unattached, without any real prospect of improving his life, if anything, it is clear that his life would go downhill from here. The character of the anthropologist friend is downright pathetic (and the big foot thing? what was about that?). The dean and the old lady playing the academic director were also repellent characters. Clearly most of these people could not get a job outside of academia. Seeing this movie, I understand why more and more people believe that tenure should be abolished.

I was actually pleasantly surprised. For some reason, I find many comedies produced lately virtually painful to watch. I was wondering if this movie would be the same... I found it to be completely refreshing; great cast, quirky characters. May be not so over-the-top impressive characters but the main characters were very likable. Luke Wilson seems like a decent actor, in this movie I felt that I was seeing a person, so I felt more connected to his role than some of his other roles. I loved the "Bigfoot" characters. And I liked the ending, too-- good but not too good to be true. I also like to comment on the theme, getting tenure. I am a university assistant professor and the process is all that and more. It is a nerve-racking process. I will stop here because there is too much detail that goes into this, which would be of no interest to the general reader. The movie did do a decent job of showing some aspects of the system yet with a great sense of humor.

Maybe it's the Wilson factor or maybe it's the music that made me think of Wes Anderson right away. It wants to be Rushmore but it's not as quirky, bitterly funny and brilliant. The characters are trying to be odd but they are more cliché than anything else: a bigfoot hunting professor on xtc is almost childish and would fit in a highschool flick. I am fairly surprised this movie made it to any film festival at all. There was hardly anything entertaining about it and in the end i found it hard to stay engaged. Too bad, the storyline has potential for a whoppin' comedy. I wonder what Anderson would have made out of this one.