Tim (Matthew Lillard), Chris (Michael Vartan), and Rand (Randall Batinkoff) are all roommates at a preppy New England college. All three of them have dreams of getting into Harvard, but Chris has recently suffered the indignity of a B+ in his Intro to Ethics class, wiping out his 4.0 GPA and all but shuttering his Ivy League hopes. Tim, likewise, isn't up to snuff in the grades department and could use some extra credit himself to secure his entry into Law School.
All seems lost until they hear a story about a little-known school policy which grants an automatic 4.0 for the semester to any student whose roommate commits suicide. For Tim and Chris, this is the opportunity of a lifetime: they can both get into Harvard and get rid of Rand, who is a colossal asshole to everyone, especially his girlfriend Natalie (Tamara Craig Thomas). All they need to do is kill Rand, make it look like suicide, take the 4.0 for their final semester, and sail into the future with slightly-stained consciences.
They scatter depressing books and music around Rand's part of their room, get him completely shit-faced at a party, then take him out to a nearby lighthouse point and chuck him over the cliff, leaving behind a fake suicide note stuffed in a bottle. All goes according to plan, until everything falls apart: the cops dredging the river can't find Rand's body, Natalie kills herself unexpectedly, and Tim's bizarre and erratic behavior keeps somehow putting Chris in the crosshairs of suspicion while driving Chris's girlfriend Emma (Keri Russell) into Tim's arms. What the hell is going on, and can anyone figure out who is playing whom and why before anyone else dies?
Note: Normally this is where I'd post the trailer, but two things prevent me from doing so: first, there's a major spoiler halfway through that gives away a significant twist, and second, YouTube has it age-restricted, so all I can link from here is a big dumb block telling you it's not available to watch except on the main YouTube site. Don't look for this trailer if you plan to see the film, just watch it through for yourself.
Back in the hazy past that is the late 90s, I remembered renting this one from Blockbuster (on VHS, naturally) and thinking it wasn't too bad. Then, of course, about twenty-five years went by when I'd think about it from time to time, but could never seem to find a copy to watch again. So much time had gone by, in fact, that I didn't even remember how the movie ended, so by this point seeing it again would be like watching it for the first time.
Having finally acquired my own DVD copy just the other day, I sat down with expectations higher-than-average but still in check, and enjoyed the hell out of it. I know much of that is the nostalgia factor, as I'm a sucker for the late 90s teen films where the whole cast appears on the movie poster. And a hell of a lot of that love comes from Matthew Lillard, who here is playing a smarter, more manipulative, and far more conniving version of Stu Macher from Scream. Yes, he's totally over the top and steals every scene he's in, but I don't mind that one bit. And if you don't either, you'll probably enjoy this.
It's important to know going in that, with the exception of one character who shall remain unnamed so as to avoid spoilers, everyone in this movie is a walking human dumpster fire. You will hate all of them by the end of the film. They're all irredeemable. You will be actively rooting for their deaths. You will root harder for some than others, and you'll probably be pissed off at who's still around when the credits roll, but if you're a fan of prep school mischief perpetrated by sociopathic rich kids like in Donna Tart's The Secret History or Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, give this one a chance.
Despite the trailer, this is NOT a horror movie set on a college campus, like Scream 2 or Urban Legend. This is black comedy/mystery, much darker in tone than Dead Man on Campus which released the same year, but which played with the same notion (the urban legend positing that the suicide of a roommate will earn the surviving roommate(s) an automatic 4.0 for the semester) in a brighter, straighter comedic way.
Thoroughly 90s (with an incredible soundtrack), thoroughly enjoyable, and an easy pick for one of my favorites. I wouldn't necessarily call it under-rated, because there's a very limited segment of the population this movie caters to. If you happen to fit that particularly twisted demographic, it's great fun.
I do, and it is.
It's available for free streaming on Tubi as of this writing, and you can check it out right here:
https://tubitv.com/movies/376067/the-curve?start=true
Best Scene:
At the party where Tim and Chris are working to get Rand wasted, the group sets up a game called "Beer Hunter", a reenactment of the Russian Roulette scene from The Deer Hunter, only played with shaken and unshaken beer cans instead of bullets in a gun. Everyone in this scene is playing it straight as an arrow and serious as a heart attack, quoting dialog from the movie word-for-word, and as a result you'll laugh your ass off as long as you get the references. Top-notch skill from all the performers involved, not to mention the props and costume department.
Let me know what you think!
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