Monty Kessler (Brendan Fraser) is a type A Harvard student. His roommates are rowing crew leader Courtney Blumenthal (Moira Kelly),pre-med Jeff Hawkes and trust fund college radio DJ Everett Calloway (Patrick Dempsey). His thesis with Professor Pitkannan (Gore Vidal) is to leave governing to the political elite rather than the needy minorities. His hard drive crashes and he loses his only copy to homeless guy Simon B. Wilder (Joe Pesci). Wilder offers to exchange one page for every one thing and the first thing being a glazed donut. He calls the campus police on Wilder but the thesis is gone.

Brendan Fraser doesn't really fit this young Republican character. At its best, the movie is a cliché with heart. At its worst, it's "Boy Oh Boy" annoyingly clunky. I admit to being a sucker for clichés with heart. I'm willing to buy into these likable stock characters but it has too many clunky moments. The movie grinds along too much. It needs more funny comedy. Pesci is not appealing. I want to like this more but can't.

Joe Pesci brings the best out of this film. The plot is OK, but Pesci, as the eccentric (yet downtrodden) bum Simon Wilder, keeps it together. He is funny, heartwarming and good at what he does- and that is acting. Brendan Frasier is also good as the college harvard who find Simon and makes the plot go around. Usually funny, usually sad, OK in my book (if I have such a book). A

I saw this film when it first came out and as it turned out I saw it with someone who spent a few stretches of his life homeless. The late David T. Frank was most moved by the film and I take that as the highest possible accolade.

In a day and age when so few of us put anything aside as a cushion against hard times, lots of people are one paycheck away from being as homeless as Joe Pesci was here. Others like Pesci, have a debilitating illness and there's no place for them. The saddest of all are some of those with mental illnesses who are surviving on medication to keep psychoses under control.

Brendan Fraser is a Harvard undergraduate who is writing his senior thesis when his computer crashes, leaving him with only one printed out copy. I've had the experience of losing valuable files when the hard drive I'm writing this review crashed, so I know exactly where he was coming from.

Topping that off he loses that copy to Joe Pesci who's made himself a makeshift shelter in the boiler room of the Harvard library. Fraser finds Pesci throwing his thesis page by page into the boiler for some heat.

Pesci's got him by the short hairs and they make an incredible bargain. He'll give Fraser back his thesis page by page for favors done. Incredibly he accepts the deal.

More incredibly the two of them form a unique bond and Pesci goes to live with Fraser and his roommates, Moira Kelly, Patrick Dempsey and Josh Hamilton. Of the group of them I really enjoyed Hamilton's portrayal of the uptight pre-med student.

The four Harvard kids learn a whole lot about life and what's really important in it. And I think they all will graduate life with honors.

This review is respectfully dedicated to David T. Frank who checked out of life way too soon. Brendan, Joe, and the rest of the cast, this film deeply moved him, good job folks.