Film

Rushmore

Name: Rushmore
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 1998
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Seymour Cassel, Brian Cox

Wes Anderson's breakthrough is a deadpan comedy about a fifteen-year-old overachiever at a prep school he's about to be expelled from, who falls for a young widowed teacher and declares war on the middle-aged businessman who becomes his rival. It's precocious, melancholy, and very funny, with a soundtrack full of British Invasion needle-drops. For anyone who likes their comedy dry and their heartbreak understated.

TMDb rating

7.4

If you liked this

Election1999

Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick is Max Fischer's spiritual twin: a relentless overachiever whose ambition curdles into something both hilarious and sad, wrapped in a similarly acid high-school satire.

But It's nastier and less forgiving of its characters than Rushmore, with less sentimentality to soften the blows.

Harold and Maude1971

The original deadpan romance across an impossible age gap, funny and morbid in equal measure, with a needle-drop soundtrack (Cat Stevens) doing exactly what Rushmore's does decades later.

But Slower and stranger by modern pacing standards, and its central romance is more provocative than Max and Rosemary's ever gets.

The Royal Tenenbaums2001

Anderson's next film, bigger and sadder, swapping one precocious overachiever for a whole family of them, with the same dollhouse visual precision and ache under the whimsy.

But More sprawling and less tightly wound than Rushmore, and some find its quirk tips further into preciousness.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

American Movie1999

Borchardt is Max Fischer with no script protecting him: the same delusional grandeur, the same theatrical self-invention, but here it's a real person and the stakes are genuinely his life.

A documentary about Mark Borchardt, a real Wisconsin filmmaker chasing grandiose artistic ambitions with zero resources and total conviction, funny and heartbreaking in exactly the way Max Fischer would be if he existed.

But It's a documentary, not a comfortable fiction, and its subject's real-life poverty and struggle give the laughs a harder edge.

The Squid and the Whale2005

Jesse Eisenberg's teenager, adrift in his parents' divorce, has Max's precocious self-seriousness without the theatrical flourish, and the film is just as funny about pretension.

But Rawer and more uncomfortable, closer to real domestic wreckage than Rushmore's stylised heartbreak.

Moonrise Kingdom2012

Anderson doubles down on precocious kids and doomed grand romance, this time with two children running away together, in his most purely whimsical register.

But Sweeter and more storybook than Rushmore, without much of that film's undertow of adult sadness.

Ghost World2001

Enid and Rebecca's smart, alienated deadpan is Max Fischer's sensibility filtered through teenage girls with nowhere to put their intelligence, funny and quietly devastating.

But More aimless and melancholic, with less plot momentum than Rushmore's romantic-triangle engine.

Igby Goes Down2002no page yet

A prep-school dropout with Max's contempt for authority and gift for self-sabotage, this one's meaner and stranger but shares the same blend of comedy and family wreckage.

But Darker and more cynical, with a protagonist harder to root for than Max ever is.

Bottle Rocket1996no page yet

Anderson's scrappier debut, with Owen Wilson as another delusional schemer convinced he's the hero of his own story, minus the budget and polish that came later.

But Rougher and less confident than Rushmore, more a sketch of the filmmaker he'd become than a fully realised film.

The Graduate1967no page yet

The granddaddy of the confused-young-man-in-love-with-the-wrong-older-person genre, dry and stylish, with a soundtrack (Simon & Garfunkel) that shaped how Anderson uses music to carry feeling.

But Its sexual politics have aged awkwardly, and its ironic detachment can feel colder than Rushmore's warmth underneath the deadpan.

Cyrano de Bergerac1990

Same engine as Max Fischer's whole campaign: a brilliant, socially awkward man who can only express love through grand theatrical gesture, convinced performance can close the gap birth or age never will.

Gérard Depardieu's swordsman-poet woos a woman he believes is out of his league through elaborate performance and borrowed words, in a lush, swashbuckling costume drama with real feeling underneath the flourish.

But It's in French, three centuries removed, and considerably more operatic and tragic than Rushmore's comic register.

The 400 Blows1959

Anderson has cited Truffaut's young rebels as a touchstone, and Max's mix of cleverness, loneliness, and self-mythologising is a direct descendant of Antoine Doinel.

Truffaut's black-and-white portrait of a misunderstood, resourceful boy running his own private war against school and adults is a direct ancestor of Anderson's whole sensibility, tender rather than cynical.

But Slower, sadder, and without a single joke built to land the way Rushmore's are; this one just aches.